githooks - Can Git hook scripts be managed along with the repository?

Question

We'd like to make a few basic hook scripts that we can all share -- for things like pre-formatting commit messages. Git has hook scripts for that that are normally stored under <project>/.git/hooks/. However, those scripts are not propagated when people do a clone and they are not version controlled.

Is there a good way to help everyone get the right hook scripts? Can I just make those hook scripts point to version controlled scripts in my repo?

Answer 1

In Git 2.9, the configuration option core.hooksPath specifies a custom hooks directory.

Move your hooks to a hooks tracked directory in your repository. Then, configure each instance of the repository to use the tracked hooks instead of $GIT_DIR/hooks:

git config core.hooksPath hooks

In general, the path may be absolute, or relative to the directory where the hooks are run (usually the working tree root; see DESCRIPTION section of man githooks).