Git hook for Redmine messages

At work we are using Redmine with the repository references enabled. When adding special terms like refs #1234 or fixes #1234 to the commit message the commit is automatically assigned to ticket 1234 and shown with the ticket. Only commiting code that references a ticket is considered to be a best practice as all changes are documented with a ticket.

As I'm using the Git SVN bridge now I tend to commit more than using plain SVN. Often I just forget to add the refs marker which is quite annoying. Pro Git introduces a hook that can be used to check your commit message for a special format.

This is the shamelessly copied hook, adjusted to the Redmine keywords:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
message_file = ARGV[0]
message = File.read(message_file)

$regex = /(refs #(\d+)|fixes #(\d+))/

if !$regex.match(message)
  puts "Your message is not formatted correctly (missing refs #XXX or fixes #XXX)"
  exit 1
end

How to use it? Copy the code to the file .git/hooks/commit-msg in your project and make it executable (chmod +x .git/hooks/commit-msg).

Try to commit without the markers:

flo@hank:~/git-redmine$ git commit -am "commit that doesn't reference a ticket"
Your message is not formatted correctly (missing refs #XXX or fixes #XXX)

And with a marker:

flo@hank:~/git-redmine$ git commit -am "commit that references a ticket, refs #1234"
[master 189b6b1] commit that references a ticket, refs #1234
 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

If you want to skip the hook for some reason you can do so using the --no-verify option:

flo@hank:~/git-redmine$ git commit --no-verify -am "special commit that doesn't reference a ticket"
[master d1c0698] special commit that doesn't reference a ticket
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

About Florian Hopf

I am working as a freelance software developer and consultant in Karlsruhe, Germany and have written a German book about Elasticsearch. If you liked this post you can follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my feed to get notified of new posts. If you think I could help you and your company and you'd like to work with me please contact me directly.