Avoiding blacklist keywords in commits — Git

Adding hooks before committing your code to avoid debugging code in Git.

I have been in a couple of situation wherein I had committed ‘byebug’ or ‘debugger’ in commit by mistake. So, I needed a solution in which I can blacklist keywords while committing.

GitHub provides hooks, that you can use to trigger certain events. Below steps will take you through the setup process to add a pre-commit hook to avoid blacklist words from committing.

1. Save the below file as pre-commit

https://gist.github.com/maanavshah/d0e5960c7c4ec48b757f92104b9f6c7e

2. Put the pre-commit file (without any extension) in the .git folder of your GitHub repository

$ mv pre-commit ~/myapps/app/.git/hooks/

3. Change file mode to allow execution by git

$ chmod +x ~/myapps/app/.git/hooks/pre-commit

4. Usage

$ git commit -m "Add debugger command"

It will not allow adding commit if your any of file changes have strings from the blacklist defined.

However, there is always a hack. You can skip hook by below command.

$ git commit --no-verify -m "I understand risk"

Further:

You can add a hook for all your GitHub repository like below –

1. Enabled Git templates

$ git config -global init.templatedir '~/.git-templates'

2. Create a directory for the global hooks

$ mkdir -p ~/.git-templates/hooks

3. Copy the pre-commit file at this location

$ cp ~/myapps/myapp/.git/hooks/pre-commit ~/.git-templates/hooks/

That’s it. Hope this helps.

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