New pr-comments and base-merge Features Added to Commit Check for Enhanced Pull Request Validation

What is Commit Check

If you are not familiar with Commit Check, it is a free, powerful tool that enforces commit metadata standards such as commit messages, branch naming, author name/email, and sign‑off, with fully customizable error messages and suggestions.

It serves as an open‑source alternative to GitHub Enterprise metadata restrictions and the commercial Bitbucket plugin Yet Another Commit Checker, offering the best free solution for Conventional Commits and Branch support.

New Features

1. pr-comments: Automatically Add Check Results to Pull Requests

In team development, PRs are the main entry point for code review. The pr-comments feature posts the results of commit‑check directly as comments on the PR after the CI/CD pipeline runs, eliminating the need to view separate log files.

Developers can see success or failure messages directly in the PR conversation, making it easier to locate issues quickly.

Example screenshots:

pr‑comments success

pr‑comments failure

Note: pr-comments only works with commit-check-action .

2. base-merge: Ensure Branch Is Based on Target Branch

This option checks whether a PR branch has been rebased onto a specified target branch (e.g., main or master ).

Automatically verifies that the current branch is based on the target branch.

If the base is incorrect, commit‑check fails the CI pipeline and provides a clear error message.

Note: base-merge is supported by both commit-check and commit-check-action .

Configuration

Using Default Configuration

If no .commit-check.yml file is present, Commit Check uses its default settings, enforcing Conventional Commits for messages and Conventional Branch rules for branch names.

Custom Configuration

To customize, edit the .commit-check.yml file. Example configuration:

checks:
  - check: message
    regex: '^(build|chore|ci|docs|feat|fix|perf|refactor|revert|style|test){1}(\([\w\-\.]+\))?(!)?: ([\w ])+([\s\S]*)|(Merge).*|(fixup!.*)'
    error: "The commit message should be structured as follows:\n\n
[optional scope]:
\n    [optional body]\n    [optional footer(s)]\n\n    More details please refer to https://www.conventionalcommits.org"
    suggest: Please check your commit message against the above regex.
  - check: branch
    regex: '^(bugfix|feature|release|hotfix|task|chore)\/.+|(master)|(main)|(HEAD)|(PR-.+)'
    error: "Branches must begin with these types: bugfix/ feature/ release/ hotfix/ task/ chore/"
    suggest: Run command `git checkout -b type/branch_name`
  - check: author_name
    regex: '^[A-Za-z ,.\\'-]+$|.*(\[bot])'
    error: The committer name seems invalid
    suggest: Run command `git config user.name "Your Name"`
  - check: author_email
    regex: '^.+@.+$'
    error: The committer email seems invalid
    suggest: Run command `git config user.email [email protected]`
  - check: commit_signoff
    regex: 'Signed-off-by:.*[A-Za-z0-9]\s+<.+@.+>'
    error: Signed-off-by not found in latest commit
    suggest: Run command `git commit -m "conventional commit message" --signoff`
  - check: merge_base
    regex: 'main' # it can be master, develop, devel etc. based on your project.
    error: Current branch is not rebased onto target branch
    suggest: Ensure your branch is rebased with the target branch

Usage

As a GitHub Action

name: Commit Check

on:
  push:
  pull_request:
    branches: 'main'

jobs:
  commit-check:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      # use permissions because of pr-comments
      contents: read
      pull-requests: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          ref: ${{ github.event.pull_request.head.sha }} # checkout PR HEAD commit
          fetch-depth: 0  # required for merge‑base check
      - uses: commit-check/commit-check-action@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} # required for pr‑comments
        with:
          message: true
          branch: true
          author-name: true
          author-email: true
          commit-signoff: true
          merge-base: false
          job-summary: true
          pr-comments: ${{ github.event_name == 'pull_request' }}

As a pre‑commit Hook

Add the following to .pre-commit-config.yaml :

-   repo: https://github.com/commit-check/commit-check
    rev: the tag or revision
    hooks:
      - id: check-message  # requires hook prepare-commit-msg
      - id: check-branch
      - id: check-author-name
      - id: check-author-email
      - id: check-commit-signoff
      - id: check-merge-base  # requires downloading all git history

As a CLI Tool

Install from PyPI:

pip install commit-check

# example
commit-check --message --branch --author-name --author-email --commit-signoff --merge-base

For more details, see the README and open issues on GitHub.

References

commit-check-action: https://github.com/commit-check/commit-check-action

commit-check: https://github.com/commit-check/commit-check

GitHub Enterprise metadata restrictions: https://docs.github.com/en/[email protected]/repositories/configuring-branches-and-merges-in-your-repository/managing-rulesets/available-rules-for-rulesets#metadata-restrictions

Yet Another Commit Checker: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211854/yet-another-commit-checker?tab=overview&hosting=datacenter

README: https://github.com/commit-check/commit-check

GitHub Issues: https://github.com/commit-check/commit-check/issues