Modes

Currently three modes for using autohooks are supported:

• pythonpath

• poetry

• pipenv

These modes handle how autohooks, the plugins and their dependencies are loaded during git hook execution.

If no mode is specified in the pyproject.toml config file and no mode is set during activation, autohooks will use the pythonpath mode by default.

Note

poetry or pipenv modes leverage the /usr/bin/env command using the --split-string (-S) option. If autohooks detects that it is running on an OS where /usr/bin/env is yet to support split_strings (notably ubuntu < 19.x), autohooks will automatically change to an internally chosen poetry_multiline/pipenv_mutliline mode. The ‘multiline’ modes should not be user-configured options; setting your project to use poetry or pipenvallows team members the greatest latitude to use an OS of their choice yet leverage the sane /usr/bin/env --split-string if possible. Though poetry_multiline would generally work for all, it is very confusing sorcery. (Multiline shebang explained)

Pythonpath Mode

In the pythonpath mode, the user has to install autohooks, the desired plugins and their dependencies into the PYTHONPATH manually.

This can be achieved by running something like python3 -m pip install --user autohooks autohooks-plugin-xyz ... to put them into the installation directory of the current user or with sudo python3 -m pip install autohooks autohooks-plugin-xyz ... for a system wide installation.

Alternatively, a virtual environment could be used to separate the installation from the global and user wide Python packages in conjunction with the pythonpath mode. A downside of using this mode with a virtual environment is that activating the environment has to be done manually.

To benefit from the advantages of a virtual environment a much better choice is to use poetry or pipenv for managing the virtual environment automatically.

Poetry Mode

With the poetry mode it is possible to run autohooks in a dedicated environment controlled by poetry. By using the poetry mode the virtual environment will be activated automatically in the background when executing the autohooks based git commit hook. All dependencies are managed by poetry using the pyproject.toml and poetry.lock files.

Hint

Using the poetry mode is highly recommended.

Pipenv Mode

Alternatively to poetry pipenv can be used to manage dependencies. In the pipenv mode pipenv is used to run autohooks in a dedicated virtual environment. Pipenv uses a lock file to install exact versions. Therefore the installation is deterministic and reliable between different developer setups. In contrast to the pythonpath mode the activation of the virtual environment provided by pipenv is done automatically in the background.