prek/docs/diff.md

Difference from pre-commit

General differences

• prek supports both .pre-commit-config.yaml and .pre-commit-config.yml configuration files.
• prek implements some common hooks from pre-commit-hooks in Rust for better performance.
• prek uses ~/.cache/prek as the default cache directory for repos, environments and toolchains.
• prek decoupled hook environment from their repositories, allowing shared toolchains and environments across hooks.
• prek supports language_version as a semver specifier and automatically installs the required toolchains.

Workspace mode

prek supports workspace mode, allowing you to run hooks for multiple projects in a single command. Each subproject can have its own .pre-commit-config.yaml file.

See Workspace Mode for more information.

Language support

Python

• prek supports Python toolchain management, it will install the required Python versions automatically.
• prek uses uv for creating virtual environments and installing dependencies.
• prek supports Python hooks with PEP 723 inline metadata.

Command line interface

prek run

• prek run [HOOK|PROJECT]... supports selecting or skipping multiple projects or hooks in workspace mode. See Running Specific Hooks or Projects for details.
• prek provides dynamic completions of hook id.
• prek run --last-commit to run hooks on files changed by the last commit.
• prek run --directory <DIR> to run hooks on a specified directory.

prek list

prek list command lists all available hooks, their ids, and descriptions. This provides a better overview of the configured hooks.

prek auto-update

• prek auto-update updates all projects in the workspace to their latest revisions.
• prek auto-update checks updates for the same repository only once, speeding up the process in workspace mode.

prek sample-config

• prek sample-config command has a --file option to write the sample configuration to a specific file.

prek cache

• prek cache clean to remove all cached data.
• prek cache gc to remove unused cached repositories, environments and toolchains.
• prek cache dir to show the cache directory.

prek clean and prek gc are also available but hidden, as prek cache is preferred.