AdaCore Git Hooks

This directory contains the AdaCore Git Hooks.

The AdaCore Git Hooks project provides a set of scripts to be used as server-side hooks for git repositories. In addition to those scripts, it also provides a testsuite to validate those scripts. Although initially developed to suit AdaCore's needs, these hooks have been designed with flexibility in mind, so as to be easily usable outside of AdaCore.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; see COPYING3 for a copy of the license.

Python Requirements

These hooks require Python 3.8 or more recent. The Python interpreter used by the hooks is the first executable called "python" found on the PATH.

Enabling the Hooks

The hooks have been designed to work with both bare and non-bare repositories. But typical usage will be with bare repositories.

To enable the hooks, an administrator needs to replace the hooks directory in your git repository by a link to the /hooks directory from a git-hooks checkout, and configure them as outlined below.

Minimum Configuration

The following config options must be set for all repositories. Updates of any kind will be rejected with an appropriate error message until minimum configuration is satisfied.

• hooks.from-domain

• hooks.mailinglist

See below for a description of these config options.

Configuration File

Configure File Location

The hooks configuration is loaded from a file named project.config in branch refs/meta/config. This file follows the same format as the various git "config" files (Eg. $HOME/.gitconfig).

Configure File Update Procedure

To update your repository's configuration and make it operational, you will need to do the following:

• Download the existing configuration from Gerrit:

  $ git fetch origin refs/meta/config
  $ git checkout FETCH_HEAD

• You are now in detached HEAD mode.

• Update the project.config file to add/update the git-hooks configuration.

  This can be done using the git config command. For instance:

  $ git config -f project.config --add hooks.from-domain example.com
  $ git config -f project.config --add hooks.mailinglist [email protected]

• Verify the project.config file contents, and in particular the new [hooks] section:

  [hooks]
      from-domain = example.com
      mailinglist = [email protected]
  

• Commit the configuration change, and push it back:

  $ git commit -a -m "Notify [email protected] of changes"
  $ git push origin HEAD:refs/meta/config

Limitations When Updating the Configuration File

These hooks do not allow pushes trying to combine multiple reference updates if refs/meta/config is one of those references. In other words, updates to the configuration file must be pushed on their own, independently of any other reference updates. Otherwise, the entire push operation is rejected with an error message.

Note About [list] Options

Some of the configuration options supported by git-hooks are documented as lists (Eg: a list of references). For such options, the value of that configuration option can be specified with either:

• One entry in the configuration file per element in the list; Eg:

      no-emails = refs/heads/fsf-.*
      no-emails = refs/heads/thirdparty
  

• (deprecated) One entry in the configuration file, with each element of the list separated by comas;

  ⚠️ Note that this method is deprecated, as considered harder to read compared to the one-entry-per-line method. You should avoid using it, as support for this format might be removed at some point.

  Example:

      no-emails = refs/heads/fsf-.*, refs/heads/thirdparty
  

Note also that, for [list] options which are documented to have a non-empty default value, it is currently not possible to override that default.

Note About Reference Name Matching

For any configuration option which provides the ability to use regular expressions to match references by name, the regular expression must match the entire reference name.

For instance, consider the following configuration:

    no-emails = refs/heads/master

The no-emails configuration matches the reference refs/heads/master, but not refs/heads/master-two because the suffix -two in master-two is not covered by the regular expression used in the no-emails configuration.

Configuration Options for General Use

The following config options are available for general use:

• hooks.allow-delete-branch [list]:

  A list of regular expressions matching reference names corresponding to branches that are allowed to be deleted.

  This option is only relevant when the hooks.restrict-branch-deletion option is set to true. Otherwise, any branch can be deleted.

• hooks.allow-delete-tag (default value: false):

  By default, deleting a tag is not allowed. To allow it, set this option to true.

• hooks.allow-non-fast-forward [list]:

  A list of regular expressions matching reference names.

  By default, non-fast-forward updates are only allowed on 'topic' branches (ie references whose name start with refs/heads/topic/). This option allows us to extend the list of references where non-fast-forward updates are allowed.

• hooks.allow-lightweight-tag (default value: false):

  Lightweight Tags (as opposed to Annotated Tags) are really not meant to be shared, and thus the hooks will reject updates that create a new lightweight tag, unless this config option is defined to true.

• hooks.branch-ref-namespace [list]:

  A list of regular expressions matching reference names which are considered to be branches. Each entry in this list extends the list of references that are recognized as branches by this repository.

  Unless the hooks.use-standard-branch-ref-namespace option is set to false, this namespace implicitly includes the necessary information to recognize all standard branches, as well as branches used by Gerrit.

• hooks.combined-style-checking (default value: false):

  By default, the pre-commit checks are performed on each commit individually. This ensures that none of the commits introduce some style violations. But some developers have found that this policy gets in the way more than it helps, and thus requested that the pre-commit checks be performed on the combination of all commits.

  The general recommendation is to keep commit-by-commit style checks. But to enable combined style-checking, set this config option to true.

• hooks.commit-email-formatter:

  If defined, this is the name of a script used to customize the contents of the emails sent when new commits are pushed.

  The script is called during the post-receive phase, once per commit for which a commit email is to be sent. The script is called with the following two arguments:

  • The name of the reference being updated;
  • The SHA1 of the commit.

  Additionally, some extra information about the commit is passed to the script via standard input, as a JSON directory, with the following key/value pairs:

  • "email_default_subject": The email subject to be used by default, if not overridden by this script.
  • "email_default_body": The email body to be used by default, if not overridden by this script.
  • "email_default_diff": The patch to include in the email, unless overridden by this script.
  • The same key/value pairs as the ones provided to the hooks.commit-extra-checker script.

  This script is expected to return via standard output a dictionary in JSON format, with the following key/value pairs:

  • "email_subject" (optional): A string containing the subject of the email to send for that commit.
  • "email_body" (optional): A string containing the body of the email to send for that commit. Note that handling of the "diff" part of the email is handled separately (see "include_diff" key below).
  • "diff" (optional): A string including the text to be included in the "Diff:" Section of the email.

  Omitting any of the keys in the return value indicates that the project does not wish to customize the corresponding part of the commit email, and the hooks will use the default contents for that part of the email.

  For instance, to change the email subject while keeping the same email body and diff, the script should return a dictionary with one element under the "email_subject" key, and all other keys should be omitted.

  If the script returns a nonzero status code (indicating a failure), or returns data in an invalid format, the default email is sent out, augmented with a warning showing the error that occurred while calling the script.

• hooks.commit-extra-checker:

  If defined, this is the name of a script to be called during the validation phase of a reference update. The purpose of this script is to provide support for customized validation rules.

  The script is called once for each new commit of each reference being updated, and takes two parameters:

  • The name of the reference being updated;
  • The SHA1 of the commit.

  Additionally, the following information about the commit is passed to the script via standard input as a JSON dictionary, with the following information (key/value pairs):

  • "rev": The commit's revision (SHA1);
  • "ref_name": The name of the reference being updated;
  • "ref_kind": The kind of reference we are updating; either:
    • "branch": A branch;
    • "notes": A Git Notes branch;
    • "tag": A tag. Note that annotated tags can be distinguished from lightweight tags by checking the "object_type" ("tag" for annotated tags, and "commit" for lightweight tags). :warning: Note also that this "ref_kind" can be misleading: The commit being given is not some kind of tag, as the value may suggest, but rather an actual commit (like a commit from a branch) which hasn't been pushed yet. We are therefore called in a very similar situation to a branch update, asked to validate new commits. Projects may elect to reject these on the basis that this is unusual, and might indicate the user made an error somewhere.
  • "object_type": The commit's object type (see git cat-file -t);
  • "author_name": The name of the author of the commit;
  • "author_email": The email address of the author of the commit;
  • "subject": The commit's subject;
  • "body": The commit's raw body (unwrapped subject and body);

  The script should return 0 if the update is accepted, or nonzero if the update is rejected.

  The script's output is always redirected to the user (stdout and stderr, both). While this can obviously be used to relay error messages when an update is rejected, some scripts may find it useful in cases where the update is accepted as well.

  ⚠️ The current working directory (cwd) when this script gets called is undefined, so it is recommended to provide a full path to that script.

• hooks.commit-url:

  If defined, a URL to be provided at the start of every commit email notification. The following placeholders can be used:

  • %(ref_name)s: The name of the reference being changed;
  • %(rev)s: The commit's SHA1.

  Python string substitution is applied, so % characters must be escaped using %%.

• hooks.disable-email-diff (default value: false):

  If True, "diffs" are not included in the emails describing each new commit.

• hooks.disable-merge-commit-checks (default value: false):

  If set to True, disable the precommit-check in charge of detecting unintentional merge commits (see Pre-commit Checks on the Revision History for more information on this check).

  ⚠️ The use of this option is strongly discouraged, as it helps catch mistakes that are easily done, especially by git users who are less experimented.

• hooks.email-new-commits-only [list]:

  A list of regular expressions matching some reference names for which commit emails should only be sent for the commits that are new to the entire repository (as opposed to just being new to the branch being updated). In other words, if performing an update to a reference matching this config option, commits found in another pre-existing reference will not trigger a commit email.

• hooks.file-commit-cmd:

  A command called with each commit triggering a commit notification email. The purpose of this config variable is to allow the use of an ad hoc script when the filing of commits in bug tracking software cannot be done simply by just sending an email.

  This provided command is called as is, with the same contents as the commit email minus the "diff" part passed via the script's standard input.

• hooks.force-precommit-checks [list]:

  A list of regular expressions matching some reference names for which precommit checks should be applied to all new commits being pushed to the reference, even if those commits already existed in another reference.

  The exception to this rule is when creating a new branch, in which case this option is ignored (for the avoidance of doubt, precommit checks will continue to be applied to commits which are new to the repository).

  By default, precommit checks are only applied to commits which are entirely new to the repository. The rationale is that commits which are good for one branch are good for all branches.

  This option allows projects to change that policy for the branches of their choice, and have the precommit checks always be performed against all new commits pushed to any of those branches, even for the commits which already exist in another reference.

• hooks.from-domain:

  The domain name of the email address used in the 'From:' field for all email notifications being sent (the local part of the email address - before the '@' -, is simply the user name on the host where the hooks are running).

• hooks.frozen-ref [list]:

  The list of references for which updates are not allowed. This is typically used to prevent users from pushing commits to former development branches which have since been closed.

  For instance, the following example shows how to disallow changes to the gdb-7.4 and gdb-7.5 branches:

      frozen-ref = refs/heads/gdb-7.4
      frozen-ref = refs/heads/gdb-7.5
  

• hooks.ignore-refs [list]:

  A list of regular expressions matching some reference names for which updates should should be ignored.

  This is mostly meant for sites that use a review system which adds its own layer between the user's repository, and the reference repository for which the git-hooks are installed.

  This option includes the following entries by default, which are meant to match references created by gerrit for its own internal purposes:

      ignore-refs = refs/changes/.*
      ignore-refs = refs/users/.*/edit-.*
  

• hooks.mailinglist:

  A list of email addresses where to send all email notifications.

  An entry can also be a script instead of an email address, in which case the script will be executed to determine the list of recipients for that script. See Using a Script in hooks.mailinglist for more details on how this works.

• hooks.max-commit-emails (default value: 100):

  This is mostly a safe-guard against updates with unintended consequences in terms of the number of emails being sent out. If an update is pushed such that the update would trigger a number of commit email notifications greater than the value of this config option, the hooks will reject this update.

  Typically, this happens when a developer merges a large number of changes from an external source, and then pushes this merge into the repository. The recommended approach to handling these merges is to first push the external commits to a branch for which commit emails are explicitly disabled (see hooks.no-email), after which the merge can be pushed. When done this way, only one commit email will be sent, for the merge commit.

• hooks.max-email-diff-size (default value: 100,000):

  This config option ensures that patches sent out inside commit email notifications do not exceed a certain size, clogging the mailbox of all recipients. Past a certain size, which is configured via this config option, the diff isn't likely to be useful anymore, and thus gets truncated. A small note is added at the end of the truncated diff to indicate that the truncation took place.

• hooks.max-filepath-length (default value: 150):

  This config option helps ensuring that repositories do not include files whose path length, relative to the root of the repository, exceeds this value. This is aimed for users using filesystems with tools which might have a very low limit in terms of maximum path length (users on Windows, for instance).

  The check is only performed for files being added (new files). If a file already exists in the repository, future commits modifying such a file will not trigger this check, even if the file's path length exists the current maximum.

  Setting this config option to zero turns this check off entirely.

• hooks.max-ref-names-in-subject-prefix (default value: 2):

  For emails corresponding to operations that affect more than one reference, the git-hooks try to list all the references in the email's subject prefix. E.g.

  [project-name/branch1,branch2]

  This config option control the maximum number of references being listed in that subject prefix. If the number of references exceeds this config, only the first max-ref-names-in-subject-prefix are listed, followed by and ellipsis indicating that the list of references is incomplete.

  One example where the configuration can be useful is for emails associated to Git Notes updates. When pushing a note, the annotated commit may be contained in several branches/references.

• hooks.max-rh-line-length (default value: 76):

  The maximum length for each line in the revision log. If any line exceeds that length, the commit will be rejected. Setting this variable to zero turns this check off entirely.

  ℹ️ We used a default limit of 76 characters instead of 80, because git commands have a tendency to indent the revision history by 4 characters. Similarly, the git hooks also send emails where the revision history also gets indented by 4 characters. This limit ensures that all lines of a commit revision history fit in a standard 80-characters wide terminal.

• hooks.no-emails [list]:

  A list of regular expressions matching some reference names for which updates should not trigger any email notification. More precisely, this options behaves as follow:

  • When pushing an update to a reference matching this configuration, commit email notifications are turned completely off (an information banner is printed to remind the user);

  • When pushing an update to a reference which does not match this configuration, except for commits which are first parents of the reference being updated, commit email notifications are turned off for all commits which are already contained in other references matching this configuration.

    ⚠️ As hinted above, for references which do not match this configuration, we always send commit emails for first parent commits. This avoids that changes first pushed to "development" branches for which there is a no-emails configuration and then later merged via a fast-forward merge get silently pushed.

  This configuration includes the following entries by default:

      # The reference that Gerrit uses for annotating commits which have
      # been reviewed and "submitted" (pushed, in Git parlance).
      #
      # Sending commit emails for those commits is unnecessary, because
      # it would be sent at the same time as the email sent for the commit
      # it annotates, with information that users rarely need to consult.
      no-emails = refs/notes/review
  

  The example below turns off email notifications for all branches whose name start with "fsf-", as well as the "thirdparty" branch:

      no-emails = refs/heads/fsf-.*
      no-emails = refs/heads/thirdparty
  

  ℹ️ Note that this option takes precedence over the hooks.email-new-commits-only option.

• hooks.no-precommit-check [list]:

  A list of regular expressions matching some reference names for which pre-commit checks should not be enabled. ⚠️ Note that this disables all pre-commit checks, including the revision history checks. It is therefore recommended that this option be only used for branches mirroring development done outside of the community.

  This is typically used for branches tracking external repositories.

  The example below turns pre-commit-checks off for all branches whose name start with "fsf-", as well as the "thirdparty" branch.

      no-precommit-check = refs/heads/fsf-.*
      no-precommit-check = refs/heads/thirdparty
  

• hooks.no-rh-character-range-check (default value: false):

  When set to false (the default), the hooks verify that all the characters used in the revision log of new commits are within a certain range, more specifically that all characters are within the ISO-8859-15 charset.

  This check was introduced primarily to reject non-printable characters in revision logs, with the understanding that it does have the side-effect of limiting the characters that can be used to the Latin character set. Projects that need to allow characters outside the Latin character set, and/or want to allow non-printable characters in revision logs, should set this configuration to true.

• hooks.no-rh-style-checks [list]:

  A list of regular expressions matching some reference names for which style-checking of the revision logs should not be enabled. ⚠️ The use of this option is strongly discouraged for branches maintained by AdaCore.

  ℹ️ Note that Revision History style-checks can be disabled for a specific commit by using the sequence no-rh-check in the revision history.

  The example below turns revision logs style-checking off for all branches whose name start with "fsf-", as well as the "thirdparty" branch.

      no-precommit-check = refs/heads/fsf-.*
      no-precommit-check = refs/heads/thirdparty
  

• hooks.no-style-checks [list]:

  A list of regular expressions matching some reference names for which style checking of the contents of files modified should not be enabled.

  This can be useful in contexts where the repository is a clone of a repository where the coding style might not match the standards required by the style checker being used, and is an alternative to creating/modifying a {.gitattribute} file to add a no-precommit-check attribute for all files; this configuration option has the advantage of not creating a local change in the repository sources, as it is stored in the repository's configuration instead.

• hooks.pre-receive-hook:

  If defined, this is the name of a script to be called at the end of the pre-receive hook. The script is called exactly the same way git itself calls the pre-receive hook, and therefore should allow customized pre-receive processing. The script should return non-zero to reject the entire update.

  The script's output is always redirected to the user (both stdout and stderr). While this can obviously be used to relay error messages when an update is rejected, some scripts may find it useful in cases where the update is accepted as well.

  ⚠️ The current working directory (cwd) when this script gets called is undefined, so it is recommended to provide a full path to that script.

• hooks.post-receive-hook:

  If defined, this is the name of a script to be called at the end of the post-receive hook. The script is called exactly the same way the post-receive hooks is called, and therefore should allow customized post-receive processing.

  ⚠️ The current working directory (cwd) when this script gets called is undefined, so it is recommended to provide a full path to that script.

• hooks.reject-merge-commits [list]:

  A list of regular expressions matching some reference names for which merge commits are not allowed.

  The example below causes merge commits to be rejected on branch "master" and all branches whose name start with "gdb-".

      reject-merge-commits = refs/heads/master
      reject-merge-commits = refs/heads/gdb-.*
  

• hooks.rejected-branch-deletion-tip:

  This option is used when a developer tries to delete a branch, and the deletion is rejected (see hooks.restrict-branch-deletion). When this happens, the hooks print an error message explaining why the deletion was rejected, and concludes with a paragraph providing some generic suggestions on how to move forward.

  When defined, this option provides some text which is printed in lieu of the generic instructions on how to move forward. This option therefore allows projects to provide instructions which are completely specific to the project, as a way to be more helpful to their developers.

  Example:

  [hooks]
      rejected-branch-deletion-tip = \
      If you are trying to delete a branch which was created\n\
      by accident, then please contact your favorite admin\n\
      and he will take care of removing the branch for you.
  

• hooks.restrict-branch-deletion (default value: false):

  When set to true, the only branches that can be deleted are the branches listed in the repository's hooks.allow-delete-branch configuration.

  When false, branch deletion is not restricted.

• hooks.style-checker (default value: style_checker):

  If provided, the program to call when performing style checks. It is expected that this program follow the same calling convention as style_checker (see https://github.com/adacore/style_checker for more details).

  It is recommended that, unless located in a very standard location always included in the PATH (Eg: /usr/bin), the full path to the program be specified.

• hooks.style-checker-config-file:

  If provided, the name of a config file, relative to the repository's root directory, to be used by the style_checker as a repository-specific configuration file (passed via the --config CONFIG_FILENAME command-line option).

• hooks.tag-ref-namespace [list]:

  Same as hooks.branch-ref-namespace, but for tags.

  Unless the hooks.use-standard-tag-ref-namespace option is set to false, this namespace implicitly includes the necessary information to recognize all standard tag reference names.

• hooks.tn-required (default value: false):

  [This is an AdaCore-specific option]

  If set to true, the hooks verify that the revision history of all new commits contain a Ticket Number, and reject the update if it is not the case.

  This requirement can be by-passed by using the word no-tn-check in the revision history, in lieu of the Ticket Number.

• hooks.update-hook:

  If defined, this is the name of a script to be called during the validation phase of a reference update. The purpose of this script is to provide support for customized validation rules.

  The script is called once for each reference to be updated, and takes three parameters:

  • The name of the reference being updated;
  • the old object name stored in the reference;
  • and the new object name to be stored in the reference.

  The script should return 0 if the update is accepted, or nonzero if the update is rejected.

  The script's output is always redirected to the user (stdout and stderr, both). While this can obviously be used to relay error messages when an update is rejected, some scripts may find it useful in cases where the update is accepted as well.

  ⚠️ The current working directory (cwd) when this script gets called is undefined, so it is recommended to provide a full path to that script.

• hooks.use-standard-branch-ref-namespace (default value: true):

  If true, the hooks.branch-ref-namespace implicitly includes the necessary information to recognize all standard branches, as well as branches used by Gerrit. If set to false, then hooks.branch-ref-namespace starts empty.

  This option is useful in the case where repositories want to restrict the list of branches allowed in the standard namespace. These repositories then start by setting this option to false, and then specify the exact namespace that they want to allow and enforce via the hooks.branch-ref-namespace option.

• hooks.use-standard-tag-ref-namespace (default value: true):

  Same as hooks.use-standard-branch-ref-namespace, but affecting the hooks.tag-ref-namespace configuration.

Configuration Options for Debugging

The following config options are recognized, but are only meant to be used for debugging/testing purposes. They should not be used during normal operations.

• hooks.bcc-file-ci (default value: true):

  ℹ️ This is an AdaCore-specific option which, in this version of the git-hooks, can only be activated while inside the testsuite. AdaCore deploys a slightly modified version where this feature is activated by default for all repositories.

  Setting this config option to false prevents the hooks from Bcc'ing AdaCore's mailing-list used to file all commits being made. :warning: This option should never be used in any official repository, and is only meant to for testing of the git hooks outside of the testsuite.

• hooks.debug-level (default value: 0):

  Setting this debug option to a value higher than zero turns debugging traces on. The higher the value, the more verbose the traces.

Pre-commit Checks

"Revert" commits

In order to avoid unnecessary complications while reverting a commit that is causing problems, all pre-commit checks (revision log, style checks) are deactivated for commits created by "git revert".

Since there is no reliable feature that we can use to identify these commits, the git-hooks rely on a heuristic instead, and look for a pattern in the commit's revision log that gets automatically inserted by the "git revert" command. In particular, at the moment, we look for the following pattern:

This reverts commit

Pre-commit Checks on the Revision History

The hooks verify that the revision histories of all new commits being pushed comply with the rules defined below. This step is skipped for any commit whose revision history contains the no-rh-check sequence.

Rules enforced on the revision logs:

• Empty line after subject line

  By convention, the first line of the revision history should always be the subject of the commit. If additional text is required, an empty line should be inserted between the subject and the rest of the revision history.

  YES:
        | The subject of my commit - no other explanation required
  
  YES:
        | The subject of my commit
        |
        | This is what this commit does.
  
  NO:
        | The subject of my commit
        | This is what this commit does, but an empty line is missing
        | between the subject and this description.
  

• Maximum line length in revision history

  See hooks.max-rh-line-length above.

• Unedited revision history of merge commits

  The purpose of this rule is to prevent a merge commit which was unintentionally created to be pushed to the shared repository. This can easily happen when, for instance, forgetting the --rebase option when doing a git pull.

  It works by detecting the default text that git uses as the revision history when the merge does not trigger a merge conflict. When a merge was in fact intentional, the revision history of the merge commit must be manually edited to avoid the Merge branch '[...] line that git uses by default as the subject of the merge commit. Doing so will satisfy this pre-commit check.

  ℹ️ Although strongly discouraged, this check can be disabled by setting the hooks.disable-merge-commit-checks config option to true.

• Merge conflict section

  When creating a merge commit during which conflicts were discovered and had to be resolved, the default revision history created by git and proposed for edition contains a section at the end that lists the files inside which merge conflicts where found. We do not want this section in the revision history of our commits, so the hooks verify that the author of the commit remembered to delete it.

• Missing Ticket Number

  This check is enable only if the hooks.tn-required config option is set. For such repositories, the hooks verify that the revision log contains a Ticket Number.

  This requirement can be by-passed via the use of the word no-tn-check embedded in the revision log. Casing is not taken into account for this rule.

Filename Collisions Pre-commit Check

On Operating Systems such as Darwin or Windows, where the File System is typically case-insensitive, having two files whose name only differ in the casing (Eg: hello.txt and Hello.txt, or dir/hello.txt vs DIR/hello.txt) can cause a lot of confusion. To avoid this, the hooks will reject any commit where such name collision occurs.

This check is disabled on the branches matching the hooks.no-precommit-check config value.

Pre-commit Checks on the Differences Introduced by the Commit

This is the usual "style check" performed by the style_checker (see the hooks.style-checker config).

Note that the program verifies the entire contents of the files being modified, not just the modified parts.

Controlling the Pre-commit Checks

⚠️ Despite the use of very similar names, note the fairly important difference in scope between the hooks.no-precommit-checks config option, and the no-precommit-check git attribute! (see below)

By default, the pre-commit checks are turned on for all commits of all branches. The following controls are available to tailor the hooks' behavior regarding this check:

• The hooks.no-precommit-check config option can be used to turn pre-commit checks off entirely for a given branch. This option is typically used for branches tracking other branches from a third-party repository.

• If the no-precommit-check string is found anywhere in the revision log of that commit, style checks are turned off entirely for that commit only (all other precommit checks are preserved).

• Setting the hooks.combined-style-checking config option tells the hooks that the second part of the pre-commit checks (operating on the differences introduces by the commits) to only check the final result. Thus, if a user pushes an update introduces two new commits C1 and C2, it does not matter if C1 contains a style-check violation as long as the violation is corrected in C2.

  It is important to note, however, that the pre-commit checks on the revision histories are still performed on a commit-per-commit basis. Otherwise, it would be possible to push a commit missing a Ticket Number in repositories that are configured to require one.

• The no-precommit-check git attribute.

  Setting this attribute for any given file disables the pre-commit checks for this file. See git --help attributes for more info on how to set those attributes.

Email Notifications

In general, developers are notified via email whenever a change is pushed to the repository. This section describes the policy used to determine which emails are being sent.

The Summary Email

The purpose of this email is to give a quick overview of what has changed.

Composition

The Summary Email is composed of two sections:

1. A short description of what has changed.

   For instance, if a tag was created, it will explain what kind of tag was created, what the associated revision log was, and what commit it points to.

2. Optionally, a list of commits which have been lost and/or added.

Sending Policy

The general policy is to send the Summary Email for all updates in order to inform its developers about the change. However, there are a number of situations where the email would bring little information to the Commit Emails already sent out:

• Branch updates:

  If the update does not cause any commit to be lost, nor does it include commits from a branch matching the hooks.no-emails configuration, then the email is superfluous and therefore not sent.

• Notes updates:

  Notes are really a special case of branch handling, where only fast-forward updates are allowed, and where the hooks.no-emails configuration is ignored. So the Summary Email is also never sent.

Filing Policy (AdaCore-specific)

Normally, this email is not used for filing purposes (ie, a copy is not even sent to our filing email address), as we are more interested in filing the individual commits than the summary.

However, it is interesting to file those emails in the following cases:

• tag creation
• tag update

In those cases, the revision log attached to those tags may contain a TN, which means this event deserves filing.

In either case, a Diff: marker is always added before the section summarizing the list of commits that were lost and/or added, making sure that this part of the email never gets filed, as the commits themselves are already getting filed.

The Commit Emails

Composition

The subject of that email is the commit's subject and its contents is roughly what the git show command would display.

Sending Policy

The Commit Email is always sent, unless the commit is found to exist in a branch matching the hooks.no-emails configuration.

Filing Policy (AdaCore-specific)

This email is always bcc'd to AdaCore's filing email address. Note that this list must not appear in any explicit To:/Cc: header, as we want to prevent any replies from being sent there.

Using a Script in hooks.mailinglist

For projects that want to use separate email addresses based on a commit or the name of the reference being updated, it is possible to use a script in place of an email address in the hooks.mailinglist config. Script entries are identified by the fact that the entry is an absolute filename, and that this filename points to a file on the server which is an executable.

ℹ️ Note that the "term" script is used loosely here as, although we expect most users of that feature to indeed use a script, a compiled program would work just as well.

Script Calling Convention

This script is called by the hooks as follow:

• The list of files being changed is passed via standard input, one file per line (this list may be empty);

• The name of the reference being updated is passed as the script's first argument.

The hooks expects the script to return the list of email addresses on standard output, one email address per line.

By convention, we expect the scripts to return all email addresses when the given list of files being changed is empty. This is useful for "cover" emails that the hooks want to send to everyone.

Script Email Expansion Policy for Commit Emails

For commit emails, the hooks will call the mailinglist script with the list of files being changed by the commit, and let the script decide who should be notified based on that list of files.

Script Email Expansion Policy for Git Note Update Emails

Git Note Update emails are similar to Commit Emails, and therefore the distribution list will be computed based on the list of files being changed. The only difference is that the list of files is going to be the list of files in the commit being annotated, not the note's commit.

Script Email Expansion Policy for "Cover" Emails

The expansion policy for cover emails is currently very simple: Send to everyone.

Rationale:

• Branch Updates:

  • For branch creation and deletion, it seems easy to understand how there is little way for us to determine who is interested in that branch update, unless we provide the name of the branch to the script. We might do that at some point, but keep things simple for now.

  • For branch update, if we have a cover letter, it means we have either commits already in another branch, or we're losing commits. Either should be relatively rare since merges are discouraged, and non-fast-forward changes are forbidden. So, it seems simple enough to send to everyone.

• Tags:

  Although it might be tempting to say to say that the notification should be same to the same list as the target's commit, this does not work: It is entirely possible that a tag for a given project point to a commit that only touches files for another project (Eg: a branchpoint tag, for instance). So, tags should be really treated the same as branches.

Managing External Baselines

It is very common to maintain forks of repositories which are officially maintained elsewhere. Typically, what we would be doing is maintain one's own fork of the official repository, to which we then apply our own set of changes.

Since we do not want style checking, nor emails when importing a new branch from the official repositories, the procedure provided below should be followed. It assumes the following one-time configuration of the repository's git-hooks configuration:

• Choose a convention for naming the branches which will be exact copies of the branches in the official repository (Eg: branches whose name start with "official/", or "fsf-", etc).

• Configure the git-hooks to turn emails and precommit checks off for those branches. Eg:

      # By convention, all branches whose name start with "official/"
      # (Eg: official/master), are considered branches from the official
      # repository.
      no-emails = refs/heads/official/.*
      no-precommit-check = refs/heads/official/.*
  

Once the setup above is done (only needs to be done once), the following procedure should work. Let's assume for instance that you would like to important branch release-xyz from the official repository. Locally, your own clone should have two remotes:

• One remote pointing to your fork;

• One remote pointing to the official repository.

We will assume that the remote pointing to your fork is called origin, and that the one pointing to the official repository is called upstream.

We will also assume that the convention you have chosen for the official branches is that they all start with official/, followed by the official branch name. So, in our example, in our fork, we would call this branch official/release-xyz.

From your repository:

• Fetch from the official repository the branch you want to import;

  $ git fetch upstream release-xyz

• Next, push to that branch to your fork, exactly as is (untouched), but following the naming convention we chose for it:

  $ git push origin upstream/release-xyz:refs/heads/official/release-xyz

  You will see a message warning you that this branch has been configured to not trigger commit emails. This is what you want.

• Then, create the branch that you will be using in your fork, and push it.

  $ git branch release-xyz origin/official/release-xyz
  $ git push origin release-xyz

From there, use the release-xyz branch as you normally would.

Later on, if you need to import new changes that were made in the official repository's release-xyz branch, follow the same principle, but without having to create the release-xyz branch in the fork. Make sure that your (fork's) release-xyz branch is up to date, before doing the import, however.

• Fetch the latest changes for your branch and push it to the fork:

  $ git fetch upstream release-xyz
  $ git push origin upstream/release-xyz:official/release-xyz

• Then, switch to the fork's release-xyz branch, merge the changes from the official release-xyz branch, and then push:

  $ git checkout release-xyz
  $ git merge upstream/release-xyz
  $ git push origin release-xyz

Retiring Old Branches

The recommended method for retiring a branch which is no longer useful is to add a hooks.frozen-ref in the project's project.config file which lists the branch's reference name. Eg:

[hooks]
    frozen-ref = refs/heads/gdb-7.5

Alternatively, the following (legacy) method is also available:

• Create a tag referencing the tip of the branch to be retired.

  The tag name should be retired/<branch-name> where <branch-name> is the name of the branch to be retired.

• Push this tag to the official repository;

• Delete the retired branch in the official repository.

By using the naming suggested for the tag, the hooks will ensure that the branch never gets accidently recreated. This would otherwise happen if a developer did not know that the branch was deleted, still had that branch locally in his repository, and tried to push his change as usual.

The use of the retired/ namespace for those tags also helps standardizing the location where those tags are created.

And the use of a tag allows everyone to determine the latest state of that branch prior to its retirement.

Re-Sending the Commit Emails

In the situation where the commit emails were either not sent, or lost, the following procedure should allow the emails to be sent again. It simply consists in calling the post-receive script with the right environment and arguments, which emulates the hooks action at the end of a "push".

One of the issues is that the author of the commit and the author of the email are two distinct pieces of information. Many times, the two will be the same, but not always. For the emails, the author is normally the user who is doing the push (that is, the user calling the hooks), while the author of the commit is provided as one of the elements of the commit email data. But he information about the author of the push is lost after the push has completed, and thus cannot be inferred again.

When re-sending the commit emails, we should try as much as possible to use the correct email address as the sender, which means overriding the default sender. If there is one principal developer who did most of the pushes, you can override the default email sender by using the --submitter-email option when calling post-receive. See how this option can be used in the example below.

Another option for overriding the default sender's email address which does not require the use of the command-line option is to define the following environment variables accordingly with their Unix user ID and full name:

$ export GIT_HOOKS_USER_NAME=ds
$ export GIT_HOOKS_USER_FULL_NAME='Dave Smith'

If none of these two alternatives for overriding the sender's email address, the user performing this procedure will be used as author of the commit emails.

Unless the missing emails are re-sent very shortly after they were pushed, it is recommended to ask the hooks to add a warning banner in the emails being sent that the emails were manually re-sent. To do so, define the following environment variable, using the reason for resending:

$ export GIT_HOOKS_EMAIL_REPLAY_REASON="<short reason> (XXXX-XXX)"

Assuming that we want to send emails for the commit in the range SHA1_BEFORE..SHA1_AFTER and that BRANCH_NAME is the name of the branch containing those commits, the following command should do the trick:

$ cd /scmrepos/git/<git-repo>
$ echo "SHA1_BEFORE SHA1_AFTER refs/heads/BRANCH_NAME" | \
    ./hooks/post-receive --submitter-email='Dave Smith <[email protected]>'

If you would like to do a dry-run before actually getting the emails sent, you can force the script into testsuite mode, which will cause emails to be printed on standard output rather than actually be sent:

# Ask the testsuite to use our fake sendmail program instead of the system one.
# This fake sendmail will dump the email on stdout rather than actually send
# the email.
$ export GIT_HOOKS_SENDMAIL=/path/to/git-hooks/testsuite/bin/stdout-sendmail

# Ask the testsuite to stop redirecting stdout, so we can see the emails
# being dumped by our fake sendmail above.
$ export GIT_HOOKS_TESTSUITE_MODE=true

Once satisfied with the output, simply unset the environment variables above before re-running the same post-receive command above again.