Re: [QUESTION] Tracking HEAD changes?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 23, 2021, 20:42 UTC
Message-ID: <YDVo0kGYODP0JjqT@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <YDROhhrM5qJti1ir@coredump.intra.peff.net>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 07:38:30PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 11:12:11AM +0200, Yaron Wittenstein wrote:
> 
> > Is there any possible way to track changes to HEAD using hooks?
> > 
> > Being able to listen using hooks to events such as pre-head-checkout
> > and post-head-checkout would be the best option (from my perspective).
> > 
> > To my knowledge, the only possible way to do that today is by adding a
> > file watch over the refs directory.
> 
> No, I don't think there is currently a better way.

Actually, I completely forgot about Patrick's recent ref-transaction hook. See the "reference-transaction" section of githooks(7). They do more than you'd need, but you should be able to write a hook that just looks for updates to HEAD, or updates to the ref that HEAD is pointing at.

The code was introduced in 6754159767 (refs: implement reference transaction hook, 2020-06-19), so you'll need Git v2.28.0 or later.

-Peff