jQuery Git Hooks

Working a lot with jquery and with git, i decided to start a repo of the hooks that i use to save time and automate repetitive activities like minifying and such.

Pre-Commit

The Problems:

1. Usually by the time I do a commit I want to create minified deployment versions of my scripts. Even with jsmin it can be tedious manually minifying scripts all the time.

2. I'm a fan of automated testing (QUnit ftw). Unfortunately, i'm also a fan of self-calling anonymous-function closures, or:

   (function($) {
       //Code here...
   })(jQuery);

   Frustratingly, you can't test functions inside of these closures. So i usually have my dev code set up without them, then add the wrapping closure to the deploy version.

3. Sometimes i add some debug output to my dev code (i.e. console.log) that, while i don't want it in the deploy script, i may want to leave around so that i don't have to re-add it all the time

Enter my Pre-Commit hook.

The first hook is the pre-commit.jquery hook. This hook is specifically for jQuery development

The Solutions:

1. Minifies any .js file that has been changed in this commit automatically (names it .min.js)
2. Wraps any .js file that has been changed in a self-calling annonymous-function closure (that thing i mentioned earlier)
3. Strips out any lines that call console.log

In other words, if you're working on a file named:

jquery.myplugin.js

After a commit you'll have:

jquery.myplugin.js
jquery.myplugin.min.js

The original will be untouched, the min will be ready for deployment.

Alternatively, if you just want a hook that will minify any .js files that have been changed, i've included a pre-commit.minify-only hook that does that. Just rename it to pre-commit and drop it in your hooks folder. Be sure that it's executable.

Installation and Requirements

Pre-Commit uses jsmin (included here). Simple drop the jsmin script somewhere in your path. This is the ruby version, so ruby is also required. If you already have a jsmin installed, that's fine too. As long as the jsmin command is found.

Drop the Pre-Commit hook in your repo, make sure everyone has execute permission

sudo chmod a+x pre-commit

And then you should be good to go.