commitizen-branch fails with exit code: 23 and message fatal: ..: '..' is outside repository

[thaDude]

Description

I cannot get the commitizen-branch hook to work, please see a self-contained demo in the reproduction steps below.

Steps to reproduce

I used uv to bootstrap the project

uv init commitizen-hook-test
cd commitizen-hook-test
uv add pre-commit --dev
uv add commitizen --dev
source .venv/bin/activate
# files below originally generated with cz init
cat << 'EOF' > .pre-commit-config.yaml
repos:
- hooks:
  - id: commitizen
  - id: commitizen-branch
    stages:
    - pre-push
  repo: https://github.com/commitizen-tools/commitizen
  rev: v4.13.9
EOF
cat << 'EOF' > .cz.toml
[tool.commitizen]
name = "cz_conventional_commits"
tag_format = "$version"
version_scheme = "semver2"
version_provider = "scm"
major_version_zero = true
EOF
pre-commit install --hook-type commit-msg --hook-type pre-push
git add *
git commit -am'feat: just a confirming commit'
pre-commit run --hook-stage pre-push

Clean-up

deactivate
cd ..
rm -rf commitizen-hook-test

Current behavior

The pre-push command results in:

commitizen check branch..................................................Failed
- hook id: commitizen-branch
- exit code: 23

fatal: ..: '..' is outside repository at '/Users/<redacted>/commitizen-hook-test'

Desired behavior

I would like the hook to pass.

Screenshots

No response

Environment

Commitizen Version: 4.13.9
Python Version: 3.12.3 (main, Dec 31 2024, 17:41:17) [Clang 15.0.0 (clang-1500.3.9.4)]
Operating System: Darwin

[natelandau]

I ran in to the same problem, I think this hook depends on an args-substitution behavior that doesn't work in all pre-commit runners (I use Prek).

As a workaround, I wrote my own local hook to get the expected behavior:

  - repo: local
    hooks:
      - id: commitizen-branch
        name: commitizen check branch
        entry: bash -c 'uv run --quiet cz check --rev-range "$PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF..$PRE_COMMIT_TO_REF"' --
        language: system
        stages: [ pre-push ]
        pass_filenames: false
        always_run: true

[mcsitter]

Some of my findings.

Running against master, commitizen-branch fails with both prek and pre-commit, but differently.

With prek, PRE_COMMIT_TO_REF is expanded while PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF remains literal ($PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF..<sha>).

With pre-commit, both variables remain literal ($PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF..$PRE_COMMIT_TO_REF).

Here is more info regarding the changes to the variables.

The relevant changes were introduced in these pull requests:

1. Default commitizen-branch hook arguments changed to use pre-commit variables

PR: #1815

Changed:
args: [--rev-range, origin/HEAD..HEAD]

to:

args: [--rev-range, "$PRE_COMMIT_TO_REF $PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF"]

This introduced the use of PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF / PRE_COMMIT_TO_REF in the packaged hook configuration.

2. commitizen-branch rev-range syntax changed

PR: #1841

Changed:

args: [--rev-range, "$PRE_COMMIT_TO_REF $PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF"]

to:

args: [--rev-range, "$PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF..$PRE_COMMIT_TO_REF"]

This changed the hook argument from two space-separated refs to the Git range syntax.

3. Exit code changed from 3 to 23

PR: #1941

This changed Git command execution from shell-based execution to shell=False.

After this change, the literal argument:

$PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF..$PRE_COMMIT_TO_REF

was passed directly to Git instead of being expanded by the shell.

The failure changed from:

- exit code: 3

to:

- exit code: 23

with:

fatal: ambiguous argument '$PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF..$PRE_COMMIT_TO_REF': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.

4. Expansion of environment variables in --rev-range

PR: #2005

Added explicit environment variable expansion in cz check --rev-range.

This restored handling of:

$PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF..$PRE_COMMIT_TO_REF

without using shell expansion.

Additional detail:

• Expansion of both variables was added here.
• Expansion of a single variable can be observed after this change when only one environment variable is available, for example:
  $PRE_COMMIT_FROM_REF..00c7da778d77ffdd2e380415e3fd47bab286bc88

Of course these PRs are linked, but i tested commits with this script which accepts a ref for commitizen to test the hook behaviour for a given tag or commit.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -u
set -o pipefail

REV="${1:?Usage: $0 <commitizen-rev>}"

ROOT=$(mktemp -d)
REPO="$ROOT/repro"
REMOTE="$ROOT/remote.git"

echo "Testing Commitizen rev: $REV"
echo "Temp dir: $ROOT"

mkdir "$REPO"
cd "$REPO"

uv init >/dev/null
uv add --dev prek >/dev/null

cat > .pre-commit-config.yaml <<EOF
default_install_hook_types:
  - pre-push
  - commit-msg

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/commitizen-tools/commitizen
    rev: $REV
    hooks:
      - id: commitizen
        stages: [commit-msg]
      - id: commitizen-branch
        stages: [pre-push]
EOF

git init -q

uv run prek install --hook-type pre-push --hook-type commit-msg

git config user.name "Test"
git config user.email "test@example.com"

git add .
git commit -m "feat: initial commit"

git branch -M main

git init --bare -q "$REMOTE"

git remote add origin "$REMOTE"

git checkout -b test-commitizen-branch

git commit --allow-empty -m "feat: reproduce issue"

git push -u origin test-commitizen-branch

Hope this helps!