Re: [PATCH v2] hooks: propose project configured hooks

From: Albert Cui <albertqcui@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 5, 2021, 23:40 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMbkP-SBQMLeM14d9KSnzE44KsfhHPsxWQ1PaskauWPynTJvWQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqmtuc49cm.fsf@gitster.g>

On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 4:09 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 36 quoted lines

>
> Albert Cui <albertqcui@gmail.com> writes:
>
> >> Requirements like these make me think that these repositories would be
> >> better off with a script that configures the hooks after checking if
> >> these things actually exist on the PATH (and installs them if not). I
> >> would lower the priority of this one for now.
> >>
> >
> > As mentioned, for enterprise deployments, this can be solved by administrators
> > installing any necessary software automatically.
> >
> > Otherwise, I think ensuring the tool is installed feels out-of-scope
> > (as written in
> > the doc); it's not like Git makes sure compilers or build tools are
> > installed today,
> > and even today, users could set up Husky hooks that rely on $PATH tools, so
> > we're not introducing a new problem.
>
> I am afraid that this compares apples and oranges.
>
> I may "git clone" and try "make" to find out that I needed a special
> compiler, and that would not be the end of the world.  It is
> guaranteed that "git clean -f -x -d" followed by installation of
> necessary toolchain followed by "make" would work.  And that is
> partly because "git clone" does not do any more than just clone and
> checkout the initial tree.
>
> If a new version of "git clone" told me "I can install the project
> recommended hooks to use", I answer "yes", and then failed while
> installing and configuring the project-recommended hooks because of
> missing dependencies, then I wouldn't know in what state the result
> would be in.  In some projects, it may be enough to just install the
> missing dependencies, and in some others, it may not be enough and I
> have a broken half-configured mess depending on how the "installing
> and configuring" step failed.

I'm a little confused, and maybe it's because we have different definitions of what "installing hooks" means. By installing hooks, I meant the addition of the hook command to the config, e.g the outcome of:

`git config --add hook.pre-commit.command pylint`

This works today; Git won't complain if I don't have pylint installed, so I don't see how we'd get into a "broken half-configured mess."

It will complain when it tries to execute the hook, and this is where I see it as the same as the 'I may "git clone" and try "make" to find out that I needed a special compiler, and that would not be the end of the world' case.