How to automatically prepend git commit with a branch name

prepare-commit-msg.sh

#!/bin/bash

# This way you can customize which branches should be skipped when
# prepending commit message. 
if [ -z "$BRANCHES_TO_SKIP" ]; then
  BRANCHES_TO_SKIP=(master develop test)
fi

BRANCH_NAME=$(git symbolic-ref --short HEAD)
BRANCH_NAME="${BRANCH_NAME##*/}"

BRANCH_EXCLUDED=$(printf "%s\n" "${BRANCHES_TO_SKIP[@]}" | grep -c "^$BRANCH_NAME$")
BRANCH_IN_COMMIT=$(grep -c "\[$BRANCH_NAME\]" $1)

if [ -n "$BRANCH_NAME" ] && ! [[ $BRANCH_EXCLUDED -eq 1 ]] && ! [[ $BRANCH_IN_COMMIT -ge 1 ]]; then 
  sed -i.bak -e "1s/^/[$BRANCH_NAME] /" $1
fi

Rename .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg.sample to prepare-commit-msg, paste the script and make the file executable.

For instance with branchARQ-653
$ git commit -m"Fixed bug"
will result with commit "[ARQ-653] Fixed bug"

More elaborated way with the reasoning behind this can be found on my old and dusty blog http://blog.bartoszmajsak.com/blog/2012/11/07/lazy-developers-toolbox-number-1-prepend-git-commit-messages/

Updated script to not include [master] in the commit message when working on this branch.

Updated script to use better commands based on stackoverflow hints

Script handles now branching name which is for example used in git-flow. Eg for branch 'feature/ABC-399' it will extract ABC-399

Thanks, man.

This is exactly what I need it.

Can the "skipped" branches include wildcards?
It would be really cool to omit stageXX (so, anything that start with stage).

Thanks for the script ;)

Tried to write this myself after leaving NEO. Your solution is way nicer than mine :)

Thanks for sharing this! Others who only want this script to run when git commit is called with no parameters can try wrapping this script in the if statement featured here
In particular :

if [ x = x${2} ]; then
  #script here
fi

Prevents the branch code from being triggered if any parameter was passed to git commit e.g -m or --amend (if length of parameter 2 is > 0)

Thanks for this hook.

One important note (which occurred to me too) - git symbolic-ref --short HEAD will miserably fail during rebase. This is because during rebase, the HEAD is detached, and doesn't have a symbolic ref. See this for details on fixing it.

@arnolox @guyarad thanks for the suggestions! :) I guess GH doesn't notify me about any life going on here! I will refine it.

@r3dDoX it's mature and refined several times :) Glad to see you around!

Cheers mate! :)

Neat little gist

For a quick install, into your project folder enter this command line:

$ curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/bartoszmajsak/1396344/raw/bff6973325b159254a3ba13c5cb9ac8fda8e382b/prepare-commit-msg.sh > .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg && chmod u+x .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg

• get Gist
• copy into .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg file
• make it executable

Finally a hook that works! Thanks a lot for this.

I have many repos. Is there a way to do this at a higher level, instead of one repo at a time?

What would I need to change to get a complete branch name in the commit message?
I always prepend the branch name with 'feature/', 'bugfix/', 'unittest/' etc. These prefixes are beeing filtered away, probably by "BRANCH_NAME="${BRANCH_NAME##*/}"". If I remove this line, the hook fails. Any tips?

Thank you. It is very useful!

@gezzi you can paste this bash script into a hooks folder in your directory of choice.

you can then run 'git config --global core.hooksPath /path/to/my/centralized/hooks' where /path/to/my/centralized/hooks is the hooks folder you created containing this script.

read more about it here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2293498/git-commit-hooks-global-settings

I have added this script in mac os 10.13.1 and it show the branch name appenede when do git commit -am ".." but on github. I cannot see the branch name in commit message.

I had a similar use case, but instead of skipping certain branches I needed to only include branches that start with certain characters.

Here is my version of the hook: https://gist.github.com/shevaroller/680719f31e610cff3e6d8c930a078eb0

Thanks man! Note to other newbies like me:

• Making the file "executable", for Mac at least, means doing "chmod u+x .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg" (when you're at the root of the project).
• You will need to quit the terminal, re-open it, then commit for the script to work.

Nice one! Thanks!

Amazing!
thanks.

This is great, thanks a lot!
I forked and added a grep for the JIRA at the end of the branch name: https://gist.github.com/jonnyparris/0a10cc63af281de23a4fd34116fed3e6

Does anyone here uses GitKraken? I tried to use this hook but it isn't appending the branch name to the commit when commiting from GitKraken.

Hello,

I must be doing something wrong. I'm trying to use your script, as is. But when I try to commit, I get the following error:

": bad flag in substitute command: 'E'

1. I'm using git flow. My feature branch name is: feature/ABC-123-some-cool-feature
2. I'm on mac os

Any thoughts?

thanks

https://github.com/milin/giticket might help if you are using precommit.

@rsirani: This works on macOS (tested on Mojave):

(Edit: My script below was based on an old version of this Gist)

#!/bin/sh

BRANCH_NAME=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD 2> /dev/null | grep -oE "[A-Z]+-[0-9]+")
if [ -n "$BRANCH_NAME" ]; then
    echo "[$BRANCH_NAME] $(cat $1)" > $1
fi

It will only include the ABC-123 portion of your branch name, so for feature/ABC-123-some-cool-feature, it will prepend [ABC-123] to the comment.

Also, it will only append the branch name if it follows that patter (ABC-123), so master, develop, etc. are automatically excluded.

This does mean if your ticket system follows a different convention (e.g., it doesn't begin with uppercase letters), this won't append the ticket number. But this works well for people using JIRA.

did some modifications a while ago that:

• prevent certain branches from prepending the jira key
• only prepend the jira key if there isn't any jira key in the branch name

https://gist.github.com/wingleung/1b6efce388b81f5554ca

Thanks so much for contributing this hook!

this is awesome...

@mikevrind

I changed the / to % in the sed command and it worked for me.
give it a try:

#!/bin/bash

# This way you can customize which branches should be skipped when
# prepending commit message. 
if [ -z "$BRANCHES_TO_SKIP" ]; then
  BRANCHES_TO_SKIP=(master develop test)
fi

BRANCH_NAME=$(git symbolic-ref --short HEAD)

BRANCH_EXCLUDED=$(printf "%s\n" "${BRANCHES_TO_SKIP[@]}" | grep -c "^$BRANCH_NAME$")
BRANCH_IN_COMMIT=$(grep -c "\[$BRANCH_NAME\]" $1)

if [ -n "$BRANCH_NAME" ] && ! [[ $BRANCH_EXCLUDED -eq 1 ]] && ! [[ $BRANCH_IN_COMMIT -ge 1 ]]; then 
  sed -i.bak -e "1s%^%[$BRANCH_NAME] %" $1
fi

that is nice.

Thank you!

great work!

Thanks, very helpful :)

Rename .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg.sample to prepare-commit-msg, paste the script and make the file executable.

For instance with branchARQ-653
$ git commit -m"Fixed bug"
will result with commit "[ARQ-653] Fixed bug"

More elaborated way with the reasoning behind this can be found on my old and dusty blog http://blog.bartoszmajsak.com/blog/2012/11/07/lazy-developers-toolbox-number-1-prepend-git-commit-messages/

Very informative, thanks for that! though I'd suggest that you elaborate a bit on what "making the file executable" means, since not everybody knows. :)

@bartoszmajsak I used this as inspiration to create a githook that prepends commit messages with a Jira ticket number (or some other pattern) if it is present in the branch name. I think this may be more practical for a lot of teams than using the entire branch name.
https://gist.github.com/johncmunson/ca02a8027a923a7f4b2f662c67d6528c

Wow, I'm amazed this little thing lives its own life. Thanks for all the comments and I'm super glad you found it useful. I guess it's time to update my blog with the suggestions :)