Simplify Your Git Workflow with Git Hooks and Essential Tools

Collie
2 min readOct 2, 2023

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Do you know that you can supercharge your Git workflow by automating tasks and ensuring code quality and structured commit messages? Learn how to enhance your Git workflow by automating tasks, enforcing coding standards, and crafting well-organized commit messages.

Understanding Git Hooks:

Git hooks come in three primary flavors, each serving a distinct purpose:

  1. Pre-commit Hooks — The Preparation Stage
  • These hooks run just before committing your changes.
  • They allow you to inspect and validate your code, ensuring it meets coding standards and passes tests before becoming part of your commit history.

2. Pre-push Hooks — The Verification Stage

  • Executed just before pushing code to a remote repository.
  • Ideal for running additional checks, such as integration tests, to confirm that your code is ready for sharing.

3. Post-commit Hooks — The Aftermath Stage

  • These hooks trigger after you’ve successfully committed your changes.
  • Useful for sending notifications, triggering deployments, or performing actions necessary after a commit.

Let’s put manual Git hook setup aside because we have automatic tools that simplify the process.

Automatic Tools :

  1. Pre-commit Stage:
  • Tool: lint-staged
  • Purpose: Ensures code quality and adherence to coding standards for files staged for commit before the actual commit is made.

2. Pre-push Stage:

  • Tool: Husky (optionally combined with other tools like linters and tests)
  • Purpose: Runs checks and tests on your code before pushing it to a remote repository, ensuring that only validated code is pushed.

3. Commit Message Formatting:

  • Tool: Commitizen, Commitlint
  • Purpose: Prompts developers to follow a structured and standardized commit message format, improving commit message consistency and traceability.

After installing these tools, remember to run npm install to make them fully functional.

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