Modernizing Your Dev Stack: Re-engineering Git Hooks with prek

j178/prek

Enter prek (by j178). It’s essentially a high-performance alternative to the classic Python-based pre-commit framework, rebuilt from the ground up in Rust.

As engineers, we love speed and minimal dependencies. Here’s why prek is a step up

Blazing Fast
Being written in Rust, it starts up and executes much faster than the Python implementation. This is crucial because "hook lag" is the number one reason devs start using --no-verify.

Single Binary
No need to worry about whether your teammate has the right Python version or virtualenv set up just to run a linter.

Compatibility
It’s designed to be a drop-in or near-drop-in replacement, so you don't have to relearn everything.

Setting it up is straightforward. Since it's a Rust tool, you can grab it via cargo or direct download.

# Using cargo
cargo install prek

# Or using homebrew (if available/configured)
brew install j178/tap/prek

Navigate to your project root and run

prek install

This sets up the necessary script in .git/hooks/pre-commit that tells Git to look at your prek configuration.

prek uses a .pre-commit-config.yaml file, just like the original framework. This makes migration a breeze.

Here is a sample configuration that runs a formatter (Prettier) and a linter (ESLint/Rust) before every commit

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/pre-commit/pre-commit-hooks
    rev: v4.5.0
    hooks:
      - id: trailing-whitespace
      - id: end-of-file-fixer

  - repo: https://github.com/pre-commit/mirrors-prettier
    rev: v3.1.0
    hooks:
      - id: prettier
        stages: [commit]

  # Example for a Rust project
  - repo: local
    hooks:
      - id: rust-fmt
        name: fix rust formatting
        entry: cargo fmt --all --
        language: system
        types: [rust]

If you want to check all files without committing

prek run --all-files

CI/CD Integration
You can use prek in your CI pipeline to ensure that the code being merged follows the same rules being enforced locally.

Language Agnostic
Even though it’s built in Rust, it can manage hooks written in Node, Python, Go, or simple Shell scripts.

Skip with Intention
If you ever need to bypass it for a quick experimental commit, the standard git commit -m "..." --no-verify still works!