Auto-installing pre-commit using a git template

Pre-commit hooks aren’t copied when a repo is cloned, and aren’t installed when a repo is created with git init. This means it’s easy to add a .pre-commit-config.yaml to a repo and forget to run pre-commit install.

Git’s init.templateDir setting lets you seed every new repo with hook files. You can use this to add a pre-commit git hook that auto-installs and runs the pre-commit tool whenever a .pre-commit-config.yaml is present.

Create the template directory and hook file:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path "$env:USERPROFILE\.git-templates\hooks" -Force

Save the following as C:\Users\<username>\.git-templates\hooks\pre-commit.cmd:

@echo off
if not exist ".pre-commit-config.yaml" exit /b 0
where pre-commit >nul 2>&1 || exit /b 0
pre-commit install --install-hooks 2>nul
pre-commit run

Register the template directory globally:

git config --global init.templateDir "$env:USERPROFILE/.git-templates"

From this point, every repo created via git init or git clone will contain the hook. The hook:

• Does nothing if .pre-commit-config.yaml doesn’t exist, so commits in repos without the config are unaffected
• Auto-installs pre-commit and runs the hooks on the first commit after .pre-commit-config.yaml is added, replacing itself with pre-commit’s own hook so subsequent commits work normally

NB: This only applies to repos initialised after the template is configured. For existing repos, run pre-commit install manually.