Zola 2025-03-25T00:00:00+00:00 https://hanlho.com/tags/git/atom.xml 2025-03-25T00:00:00+00:00 2025-03-25T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://hanlho.com/p/continuous-deployment-for-personal-cli-tools/ <p>Git pre-push hooks can automate local installation of your personal CLI tools, creating a development workflow where your working environment always has the latest version of your code.</p> <p>When developing CLI tools, for example for personal use, I often want to run the latest version locally to quickly identify issues and get a feel for changes. Constantly installing updates manually or running from source creates unnecessary friction. This article shows how to automate this process using Git pre-push hooks.</p> <h2 id="a-simple-solution-local-continuous-deployment">A Simple Solution: Local Continuous Deployment</h2> <p>Automatically installing an updated CLI command locally whenever you push changes to your repository creates a featherweight continuous deployment pipeline. This keeps your local environment in sync with your latest code changes with minimal effort.</p> <h2 id="what-are-git-hooks">What Are Git Hooks?</h2> <p>Git hooks are scripts that Git executes before or after events like commit, push, or receive. Pre-push hooks run automatically before your code is pushed to a remote repository.</p> <h2 id="implementation-git-pre-push-hooks">Implementation: Git Pre-Push Hooks</h2> <p>The implementation is straightforward. Use git's pre-push hooks to trigger installation automatically:</p> <ol> <li>Edit the git <code>pre-push</code> hook file:</li> </ol> <pre data-lang="bash" style="background-color:#eff1f5;color:#4f5b66;" class="language-bash "><code class="language-bash" data-lang="bash"><span style="color:#bf616a;">vim</span><span> .git/hooks/pre-push </span></code></pre> <ol start="2"> <li>Make it executable:</li> </ol> <pre data-lang="bash" style="background-color:#eff1f5;color:#4f5b66;" class="language-bash "><code class="language-bash" data-lang="bash"><span style="color:#bf616a;">chmod</span><span> +x .git/hooks/pre-push </span></code></pre> <ol start="3"> <li>Add installation commands to the hook:</li> </ol> <pre data-lang="bash" style="background-color:#eff1f5;color:#4f5b66;" class="language-bash "><code class="language-bash" data-lang="bash"><span style="color:#a7adba;">#!/bin/sh </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">install.sh </span><span style="color:#96b5b4;">exit </span><span>$</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">? </span><span style="color:#a7adba;"># Propagate the exit code </span></code></pre> <p>The <code>install.sh</code> script in this example should contain whatever commands you would normally use to install your CLI tool locally. If you use build tools like <code>make</code> or <code>just</code>, you can call those commands directly.</p> <p>For a tool written in Rust your <code>install.sh</code> script may contain:</p> <pre data-lang="bash" style="background-color:#eff1f5;color:#4f5b66;" class="language-bash "><code class="language-bash" data-lang="bash"><span style="color:#bf616a;">cargo</span><span> install</span><span style="color:#bf616a;"> --path</span><span> . </span></code></pre> <p>This approach automatically rebuilds and installs your application on every push to the repository and ensures you're always using the latest version without any manual steps.</p> <p>Note:</p> <ul> <li> <p>This works best when developing directly on the main branch. If you work with feature branches, you'll need to consider which version you want running locally at any given time.</p> </li> <li> <p>For added robustness, you can extend this approach to run tests or lint your code before installation.</p> </li> <li> <p>Hooks are not pushed to your repository by default. You will need to set them up on each development machine.</p> </li> </ul> <p>Thank you for reading, Hans</p>