pre-commit: How to disable the check for unstaged files?

Question

My pre-commit.com config looks like this:

repos:
-   repo: https://github.com/pre-commit/pre-commit-hooks
    rev: v3.2.0
    hooks:
    -   id: trailing-whitespace
    -   id: end-of-file-fixer
    -   id: check-yaml
    -   id: check-added-large-files
-   repo: https://gitlab.com/pycqa/flake8
    rev: ''  # pick a git hash / tag to point to
    hooks:
    -   id: flake8
-   repo: https://github.com/pre-commit/mirrors-isort
    rev: v5.7.0
    hooks:
    - id: isort

If I try to commit I get this error:

guettli@yoga15:~/projects/foo$ LANG=C git commit

[WARNING] Unstaged files detected.
[INFO] Stashing unstaged files to /home/guettli/.cache/pre-commit/patch1611141286.
Trim Trailing Whitespace.............................(no files to check)Skipped
Fix End of Files.....................................(no files to check)Skipped
Check Yaml...........................................(no files to check)Skipped
Check for added large files..........................(no files to check)Skipped
flake8...............................................(no files to check)Skipped
isort................................................(no files to check)Skipped
[INFO] Restored changes from /home/guettli/.cache/pre-commit/patch1611141286.

On branch feature/super-foo
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git restore <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
    modified:   .gitignore

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
    .pre-commit-config.yaml

no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

I would like to avoid the checking for unstaged files. I know what I do, and if I only want to commit some changes (not all), then I want to do this.

How to disable the check for unstaged files?

Beniamino

Answer 1

From your output, you didn't stage any files for commit. so git itself prevented you from committing (not pre-commit) -- if you actually wanted to commit nothing you can use git commit --allow-empty. If you want to stage some files for commit, use git add, or use git commit -a

Note that there were no errors from pre-commit here -- only a warning telling you that unstaged things were temporarily removed so that partial commits can be linted successfully.

---

disclaimer: I'm the author of pre-commit

Cooker

Thank you! I was blind. Maybe pre-commit could be more explicit here (for stupid and blind users like me). – Beniamino

I think pre-commit is much more than a simple helper. Why not use it for setting up python dev-environments which have requirements outside the pyhon world? – Beniamino

I'm not sure what you're asking specifically :S -- pre-commit works for all sorts of different programming languages (despite being written in python and being most popular in python) – Cooker

@AnthonySottile Is there a way to disable pre-commit auto staging any unstaged changes? I'd like my Git messages to correctly reflect what changes took place> Its quite annoying. – Collected

@Collected pre-commit will never touch the staging area -- so you probably have some rogue thing running git add – Cooker

@AnthonySottile idk then maybe its vs code itself but running git from command line with --no-verify doesn't cause that behaviour (i.e. pre-commit hooks don't get invoked) – Collected

yep, 2 years later it seems pre-commit and vscode git plugin still don't get along – Ochoa

Answer 2

The pre-commit hook will use a way of iterating over the files in the changeset. There's probably something like git ls-files in there. If you use git ls-files -c then it will just show you the cached changes (the default) -- if you use git ls-files -o then it will show uncommitted (other) files as well.

If you're re-using someone else's hooks, then you'll need to investigate those hooks to determine if there's a way they can selectively disable the changes.

Pretzel

Your answer is about general pre-commit, but the question is about pre-commit.com hooks. – Beniamino

Sure, that's why I said you're going to have to look at the hooks that were provided by someone else. It's not a configuration option that exists or defaults and there aren't flags that are standardised. If you look at the code for the hooks, you now know what to look for. – Pretzel

You are right "look at the code" is almost always an answer (beside many other answers) – Beniamino