Fit Commit

A Git hook to validate your commit messages, based largely on Tim Pope's authoritative guide.

Example

$ git commit
Adding a cool feature
foobar foobar foobar,
foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar

1: Error: Message must use imperative present tense.
2: Error: Second line must be blank.
3: Error: Lines should be <= 72 chars. (76)

Force commit? [y/n] ▊

Prerequisites

• Ruby >= 1.9 (OS X users already have this installed)

Installation

Install the gem:

$ gem install fit-commit

Install the hook in your Git repo:

$ fit-commit install

This creates a .git/hooks/commit-msg script which will automatically check your Git commit messages.

Validations

• Line Length: All lines must be <= 72 chars (URLs excluded). First line should be <= 50 chars. Second line must be blank.
• Tense: Message must use imperative present tense: "Fix bug" and not "Fixed bug" or "Fixes bug."
• Summary Period: Do not end your summary with a period.
• WIP: Do not commit WIPs to shared branches.
• Frat House: No frat house commit messages in shared branches.

Configuration

Settings are read from these files in increasing precedence: /etc/fit_commit.yml, $HOME/.fit_commit.yml, config/fit_commit.yml, ./.fit_commit.yml.

These are the default settings that can be overridden:

---
Validators/LineLength:
  Enabled: true
  MaxLineLength: 72
  SummaryWarnLength: 50
  AllowLongUrls: true
Validators/Tense:
  Enabled: true
Validators/SummaryPeriod:
  Enabled: true
Validators/Wip:
  Enabled:
    - master
Validators/Frathouse:
  Enabled:
    - master

The Enabled property accepts multiple formats:

# true/false to enable/disable the validation (branch agnostic)
Validators/Foo:
  Enabled: false
# Array of String/Regex matching each branch for which it's enabled
Validators/Bar:
  Enabled:
    - master
    - !ruby/regexp /\Afoo.+bar/

FAQ

Can Fit Commit run in all my repos without having to install it each time?

First set your global Git template directory:

$ git config --global init.templatedir '~/.git_template'
$ mkdir -p ~/.git_template/hooks

Now you can copy the hooks you want installed in new repos by default:

# From a repo where Fit Commit is already installed
$ cp .git/hooks/commit-msg ~/.git_template/hooks/commit-msg

To copy your default hooks into existing repos:

$ git init

Who decided these rules?

Fit Commit aims to enforce community standards. The two influential guides on the subject are:

• Tim Pope's blog
• The official Git documentation

The Git community has largely (but not completely) coalesced around these standards. Chris Beams and the Pro Git book also provide good summaries on why we have them.

Fit Commit is too opinionated for me. What can I do?

Fit Commit aims to be useful to everyone. If you can suggest an improvement to make it useful to more people, please open a GitHub Issue or Pull Request.

Credits

Author: Mike Foley

Inspiration taken from: Tim Pope, Jason Fox, Addam Hardy, pre-commit

Similar projects: gitlint (written in Python)