Guide: Local setup​

Get high commit message quality and short feedback cycles by linting commit messages right when they are authored.

This guide demonstrates how to achieve this via git hooks.

Follow theGetting Started for basic installation and configuration instructions.

Add hook​

To use commitlint you need to setupcommit-msg hook (currentlypre-commit hook is not supported)

Using a git hooks manager​

To lint commits before they are created you can useHusky'scommit-msg hook.

You can find complete setup instructions on theofficial documentation.

npm install --save-dev husky# husky@v9npx husky init# husky@v8 or lowernpx husky install# Add commit message linting to commit-msg hookecho "npx --no -- commitlint --edit\$1" > .husky/commit-msg# Windows users should use ` to escape dollar signsecho "npx --no -- commitlint --edit `$1`" > .husky/commit-msg

npm pkg set scripts.commitlint="commitlint --edit"echo "npm run commitlint\${1}" > .husky/commit-msg

Using git hooks​

Info about git hooks can be found onGit documentation.

Test​

Test simple usage​

For a first simple usage test of commitlint you can do the following:

npx commitlint --from HEAD~1 --to HEAD --verbose

yarn commitlint --from HEAD~1 --to HEAD --verbose

pnpm commitlint --from HEAD~1 --to HEAD --verbose

bun commitlint --from HEAD~1 --to HEAD --verbose

deno task --eval commitlint --from HEAD~1 --to HEAD --verbose

This will check your last commit and return an error if invalid or a positive output if valid.

Test the hook​

You can test the hook by simply committing. You should see something like this if everything works.

git commit -m "foo: this will fail"#  husky > commit-msgNo staged files match any of provided globs.⧗   input: foo: this will fail✖   type must be one of [build,chore, ci, docs, feat, fix, perf, refactor, revert, style, test] [type-enum]✖   found 1 problems, 0 warningsⓘ   Get help: https://github.com/conventional-changelog/commitlint/#what-is-commitlinthusky - commit-msg script failed (code1)

Sincev8.0.0commitlint won't output anything if there are no problems with your commit.
(You can use the--verbose flag to get positive output)

git commit -m "chore: lint on commitmsg"# husky > pre-commitNo staged files match any of provided globs.# husky > commit-msg

Local linting is fine for fast feedback but can easily be tinkered with. To ensure all commits are linted you'll want to check commits on an automated CI Server too. Learn how to in theCI Setup guide.