CLI: but push does not forward (real time) the logs from git hooks like pre-push

[marcelo-dasilva]

Hello everyone,

It looks like when running but push, the logs from the git-hooks that I have are not forwarded to the terminal so I can't see what is doing.

I'm running unit tests on push, and actually, the logs are printed but only if something fails and only at the very end, not in a real time manner as if I run git push directly.

This might also apply for commit hooks.

Do you have an idea if it's config or maybe this is not supported, please? 🙏

[cookesan]

That behavior matches the current push path.

GitButler runs the pre-push hook itself before the actual git push when runHooks is enabled. The actual push then uses git push --quiet --no-verify ..., so Git itself is not the thing streaming the hook output.

In the current hook runner, the pre-push hook is spawned and then collected with wait_with_output(). On success, that captured output is not surfaced; on failure, stdout/stderr are joined into the error text. I do not see a live stdout/stderr forwarding path for successful or still-running hook output.

So the hook can run and still not appear live in the UI/CLI output. If the desired behavior is real-time pre-push logs, the hook runner would need to stream the child process stdout/stderr while still preserving the final error text for GitButler's existing error handling.

[Byron]

I think this message correctly analyzes the cause of the problem, which also implies that there is no configuration switch that you could use to get the desired real-time behavior.

However, I would consider this a UX issue because the hook information really ought to show.

What's interesting is that graphical user interfaces would also benefit from showing this information in real time. So I think quick hacks won't solve this. And forwarding real-time output f from spawn programs is nothing we can currently do, but I think there's good reason to figure it out.

[Byron]

Actually I worked on a quick analysis, but realized that I didn't just want to create another issue that will probably not be processed anytime soon.

So here is the result for posterity.

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Spawned from Q&A discussion: #13467

Problem

but currently runs all kinds of Git hooks, but hook output is not streamed live to the terminal. For long-running hooks, such as unit tests, the command appears silent until completion. Output is only surfaced at the end when the hook fails.

This is not just a but issue. GitButler currently lacks a general facility for running external programs while forwarding stdout/stderr in real time to the active user interface.

To do that right, one would have to:

• capture and send stdout and stderr to another location in real-time
  • it's unclear how that would be hooked up for GUIs, Tauri and Napi need different mechanisms
  • It's also unclear how to do that conveniently for any caller - this would effectively force changing the API quite substantially
• Let the location decide what to do, while processing the status of the program like before, without attempting to collect stdout/stderr separately. The caller then can decide what to do based on the hook function's return value.

Initial use cases

• but push pre-push hooks
• but pr new when it pushes and runs pre-push hooks
• commit-related hooks where applicable: pre-commit, commit-msg, post-commit
• any future external tool invocation that needs user-visible progress