Subject: Re: Arguments to git hooks

From: Marcus Karlsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 6 May 2012 23:11:21 +0200

On Mon, May 07, 2012 at 12:48:35AM +0530, jaseem abid wrote:
> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 12:42 AM, Marcus Karlsson <[email-masked]> wrote:
> > As far as I can see that's the only argument that git-commit passes on
> > to the commit-msg hook. Can't you just call something like git-status
> > from the hook or do you need the information passed specifically as an
> > argument?
> 
> I can always get last commit from `.git/COMMIT_EDITMSG'` - a fixed
> file. Isn't passing that as an argument a bit pointless?

That's a good question. I don't know. If someone else knows the reason I
sure would like to find out.

> I want files I tried to commit specifically passed in as an argument.

There are many different reasons to use hooks. If everything that a hook
could potentially need was passed to it as an argument then a lot of
data would often end up unused. Better to supply as little as possible
and only do more work when it's actually needed.

> Are you suggesting me to run some plumbing command, parse the result
> and get the required data ? Is there an easier way to get this done?

I wouldn't go as deep as the plumbing, I think git status --porcelain
should work just fine, the output is fairly easy to parse.

	Marcus