- DocsUsing Git hooks
Git hooks
Basically they are scripts which allow you to run custom actions automatically on every git commit.
They exists in your repository .git/hooks/ and are not copied when pulling/pushing.
Git hooks are explained really well in git documentation. Example hooks can be found on a Linux system at the path /usr/share/git-core/templates/hooks/.
Basically the hooks are just shell scripts and it should be fairly easy for any developer to customize them.
During development: pre-commit hook
The pre-commit hook script is run by git on every commit attempt. If the hook returns any exit code whatsoever, the commit is aborted and the developer alerted that they need to fix their code before a commit can be accepted.
The purpose of this hooks is to help with quality control, preventing developers from committing code that has clear mistakes in them.
Our WordPress project template contains one custom git hook example you can find in scripts/git-hooks/pre-commit.
By default our example pre-commit hooks script runs php -l to check if there are any syntax errors in the modified PHP files, and then it runs the Codeception tests to check that the integration tests pass.
How to temporarily skip the pre-commit hook
You can use -n flag to skip hooks in case you are sure you want to make a commit and specifically want to ignore the result of any quality assurance and testing done by the git pre-commit hook.
$ git commit -n -m "commit message"
During deployment: post-receive hook
When a developer runs git push production or similar to push the code to the remote server, the remote server will trigger the hook .git/hooks/post-receive. At Seravo the post-receive hook is preinstalled for convenience, but developers are naturally free to remove it if it is not needed.
This script will see if the composer.json or any files in nginx/*.conf were modified in the commit, and if that was the case it will run composer install or reload Nginx. Feel free to extend the script to run any asset builder (npm, yarn etc) if used in the project.
Note that while there is a post-receive hook on the server, it’s not installed on local development environments, as it’s useless (and potentially even harmful). Even if the script is in version control, it is only active if there is a link from .git/hooks/post-receive -> scripts/git-hooks/post-receive.
Testing git hooks
Since the git hooks are just regular scripts, you can easily test them by simply running them e.g. like this:
$ /data/wordpress/.git/hooks/post-receive
Seravo: running post-receive git hook
*** Seems the stdin is empty, executing git hook as is all files changed ***
Seravo: composer.json was updated, installing...
Loading composer repositories with package information
Installing dependencies from lock file
Nothing to install or update
Generating autoload files
3 packages you are using are looking for funding.
Use the `composer fund` command to find out more!
> WordPress\Installer::symlinkWPContent
Seravo: SASS files changed, running Gulp...
[22:14:20] Using gulpfile /data/wordpress/gulpfile.js
[22:14:20] Starting 'default'...
[22:14:20] Starting 'build'...
[22:14:20] Starting 'sass'...
[22:14:20] Finished 'sass' after 270 ms
[22:14:20] Starting 'js'...
[22:14:21] Finished 'js' after 1.14 s
[22:14:21] Finished 'build' after 1.41 s
[22:14:21] Finished 'default' after 1.41 s
Found Tideways API key: abc123
{"apiKey": "abc123", "name": "894405ac", "type": "release", "environment": "production", "service": "web", "compareAfterMinutes":90}
==> Tideways event registered successfully!
Seravo: Flushing all caches...
----> Purging WordPress object cache...
Success: The cache was flushed.
----> Flush WordPress rewrites...
Success: Rewrite rules flushed.
----> Flush the entire Redis cache (includes Nginx PageSpeed cache etc)...
OK
----> Success
----> Purging Nginx page cache...
Cache purged successfully for example_123xyz.
Error: Couldn't purge cache. Could be empty already.
One common reason for scripts to fail is the lack of the executable bit. That is easily fixed by chmod +x /data/wordpress/.git/hooks/post-receive or if it is a link, with chmod +x /data/wordpress/scripts/git-hooks/post-receive.