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

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'

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_templates/hooks/commit-msg

To copy your default hooks into existing repos:

$ git init

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