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Git Hook

Git hooks are scripts that Git executes automatically at specific points in the version-control workflow. They live in the .git/hooks/ directory of a repository and are triggered by operations such as committing, merging, pushing, or checking out.

Common hooks used in projects:

  • pre-commit runs before a commit is recorded. It is the standard place to invoke code-quality tools: static analysis or unit test suites to block commits that would introduce errors or style violations
  • commit-msg validates the commit message format, for example enforcing a conventional-commits pattern
  • pre-push runs before git push sends data to a remote. It is a last line of defence for running the full test suite
  • post-checkout and post-merge can automate composer install after switching branches or pulling changes

Because .git/hooks/ is not tracked by version control, teams share hook scripts through tools such as captainhook/captainhook, brainmaestro/composer-git-hooks, or husky, for JavaScript-adjacent stacks. These tools install hooks from a committed configuration file, ensuring every contributor runs the same checks.

#!/bin/sh
# .git/hooks/pre-commit
# Block commit if PHP syntax errors are found
git diff --cached --name-only --diff-filter=ACM | grep '\.php$' | while read file; do
    php -l "$file" || exit 1
done

Documentation

See Also