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A tool that lets you easily manage git hooks

The package was recently renamed from simple-pre-commit.

See Releases for the simple-pre-commit documentation and changelog

Who uses simple-git-hooks?

What is a git hook?

A git hook is a command or script that is going to be run every time you perform a git action, like git commit or git push.

If the execution of a git hook fails, then the git action aborts.

For example, if you want to run linter on every commit to ensure code quality in your project, then you can create a pre-commit hook that would call npx lint-staged.

Check out lint-staged. It works really well with simple-git-hooks.

You can look up about git hooks on the Pro Git book.

When to use it

simple-git-hooks works well for small-sized projects when you need quickly set up hooks and forget about it.

However, this package requires you to manually apply the changes to git hooks. If you update them often, this is probably not the best choice.

Also, this package allows you to set only one command per git hook.

If you need multiple verbose commands per git hook, flexible configuration or automatic update of git hooks, please check out the other packages:

Usage

Add simple-git-hooks to the project

  1. Install simple-git-hooks as a dev dependency:

    npm install simple-git-hooks --save-dev

  2. Add simple-git-hooks to your package.json. Fill it with git hooks and the corresponding commands.

    For example:

    {
  "simple-git-hooks": {
    "pre-commit": "npx lint-staged",
    "pre-push": "npm run format",

    // All unused hooks will be removed automatically by default
    // but you can use the `preserveUnused` option like following to prevent this behavior

    // if you'd prefer preserve all unused hooks
    "preserveUnused": true,

    // if you'd prefer preserve specific unused hooks
    "preserveUnused": ["commit-msg"]
  }
}

    This configuration is going to run all linters on every commit and formatter on push.

    There are more ways to configure the package. Check out Additional configuration options.

  3. Run the CLI script to update the git hooks with the commands from the config:

    # [Optional] These 2 steps can be skipped for non-husky users
git config core.hooksPath .git/hooks/
rm -rf .git/hooks

# Update ./git/hooks
npx simple-git-hooks

Now all the git hooks are created.

Update git hooks command

  1. Change the configuration.

  2. Run npx simple-git-hooks from the root of your project.

Note for yarn2 users: Please run yarn dlx simple-git-hooks instead of the command above. More info on dlx

Note for yarn1 users: Please run ynpx simple-git-hooks instead of the command above. More info on ynpx

Note that you should manually run npx simple-git-hooks every time you change a command.

Additional configuration options

You can also add a .simple-git-hooks.cjs, .simple-git-hooks.js, simple-git-hooks.cjs, simple-git-hooks.js, .simple-git-hooks.json or simple-git-hooks.json file to the project and write the configuration inside it.

This way simple-git-hooks configuration in package.json will not take effect any more.

.simple-git-hooks.cjs, .simple-git-hooks.js or simple-git-hooks.cjs, simple-git-hooks.js should look like the following.

module.exports = {
  "pre-commit": "npx lint-staged",
  "pre-push": "npm run format",
};

.simple-git-hooks.json or simple-git-hooks.json should look like the following.

{
  "pre-commit": "npx lint-staged",
  "pre-push": "npm run format"
}

If you need to have multiple configuration files or just your-own configuration file, you install hooks manually from it by npx simple-git-hooks ./my-config.js.

Note for npm package developers

Please do not add postinstall: "npx simple-git-hooks" script in your package.json. Or at least remove it before npm publish

It causes errors for end users of your package

Uninstall simple-git-hooks

Uninstallation will remove all the existing git hooks.

npm uninstall simple-git-hooks

Common issues

I want to skip git hooks!

If you need to bypass install hooks at all, for example on CI, you can use SKIP_INSTALL_SIMPLE_GIT_HOOKS environment variable at the first place.

export SKIP_INSTALL_SIMPLE_GIT_HOOKS=1

npm install simple-git-hooks --save-dev

Or if you only need to bypass hooks for a single git operation, you should use --no-verify option

git commit -m "commit message" --no-verify # -n for shorthand

you can read more about it here https://bobbyhadz.com/blog/git-commit-skip-hooks#skip-git-commit-hooks

If you need to bypass hooks for multiple Git operations, setting the SKIP_SIMPLE_GIT_HOOKS environment variable can be more convenient. Once set, all subsequent Git operations in the same terminal session will bypass the associated hooks.

# Set the environment variable
export SKIP_SIMPLE_GIT_HOOKS=1

# Subsequent Git commands will skip the hooks
git add .
git commit -m "commit message"  # pre-commit hooks are bypassed
git push origin main  # pre-push hooks are bypassed

Skipping Hooks in 3rd party git clients

If your client provides a toggle to skip Git hooks, you can utilize it to bypass the hooks. For instance, in VSCode, you can toggle git.allowNoVerifyCommit in the settings.

If you have the option to set arguments or environment variables, you can use the --no-verify option or the SKIP_SIMPLE_GIT_HOOKS environment variable.

If these options are not available, you may need to resort to using the terminal for skipping hooks.

When migrating from husky git hooks are not running

Why is this happening?

Husky might change the core.gitHooks value to .husky, this way, git hooks would search .husky directory instead of .git/hooks/.

Read more on git configuration in Git book

You can check it by running this command inside of your repo:

git config core.hooksPath

If it outputs .husky then this is your case

How to fix?

you need to point core.gitHooks value to your-awesome-project/.git/hooks. You can use this command:

git config core.hooksPath .git/hooks/

validate the value is set:

git config core.hooksPath

should output: .git/hooks/

Then remove the .husky folder that are generated previously by husky.

I am getting "npx: command not found" error in a GUI git client

This happens when using a node version manager such as nodenv, nvm, mise which require init script to provide project-specific node binaries.

Create init script in ~/.simple-git-hooks.rc that should be executed prior to git hooks. Please refer to your node manager documentation for details. For example, for mise, that will be:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/share/mise/shims:$PATH"

Add SIMPLE_GIT_HOOKS_RC global environment variable pointing to that new script. For example, on macOS, add this to ~/.zshenv:

export SIMPLE_GIT_HOOKS_RC="$HOME/.simple-git-hooks.rc"