Pre-Commit Hooks

CodeCharter in CI is mandatory. CodeCharter locally before committing is optional — but it saves iteration time because you don't have to wait for the CI build to find out whether a convention was violated.

Using Git hooks directly

.git/hooks/pre-commit:

#!/bin/sh
set -e

# Quick check: validate rules only
codecharter validate || {
    echo "❌ CodeCharter rules invalid. Fix .codecharter/rules/ before committing."
    exit 1
}

# Optional: full analysis, errors only
codecharter analyze . --fail-on error --output console || {
    echo ""
    echo "❌ CodeCharter found blocking issues."
    echo "Run 'codecharter analyze .' for details, or commit with --no-verify if you really want."
    exit 1
}

chmod +x .git/hooks/pre-commit.

On Windows: the same script works with Git for Windows (Git Bash).

Using pre-commit (the Python tool)

If you already use pre-commit, add this to .pre-commit-config.yaml:

repos:
  - repo: local
    hooks:
      - id: codecharter-validate
        name: CodeCharter validate rules
        entry: codecharter validate
        language: system
        pass_filenames: false
        files: ^\.codecharter/

      - id: codecharter-analyze
        name: CodeCharter analyze
        entry: codecharter analyze . --fail-on error
        language: system
        pass_filenames: false
        types: [csharp]

Using Husky (Node.js)

For JS/TS repos that also happen to have C#, or mixed teams:

.husky/pre-commit:

#!/usr/bin/env sh
. "$(dirname -- "$0")/_/husky.sh"

codecharter analyze . --fail-on error

Run the hook only on C# changes

A full analysis before every commit can take longer on large solutions. Skip the run if the commit doesn't touch any .cs files:

#!/bin/sh
CHANGED=$(git diff --cached --name-only --diff-filter=ACMR -- '*.cs')
if [ -z "$CHANGED" ]; then
    exit 0
fi
codecharter analyze MySolution.sln --fail-on error

Recommended strategy

This keeps the hooks in the hot path fast and catches obvious mistakes without making every commit take fifteen seconds.