Troubleshooting

Reviews Not Triggering

The most common issue is commits going unreviewed. Walk through these checks in order.

Check the hook is installed

roborev uses a post-commit git hook to enqueue commits for review. Verify it exists:

# Resolves core.hooksPath (relative or absolute) against the main
# repo root, falling back to .git/hooks. Works from linked worktrees.
COMMON="$(git rev-parse --path-format=absolute --git-common-dir)"
HP="$(git config core.hooksPath || true)"
if [ -n "$HP" ]; then
  case "$HP" in /*) HOOKS="$HP" ;; *) HOOKS="${COMMON%/.git}/$HP" ;; esac
else
  HOOKS="$COMMON/hooks"
fi
cat "$HOOKS/post-commit"

A healthy hook contains a roborev enqueue call. You should see something like:

#!/bin/sh
# roborev post-commit hook - auto-reviews every commit
roborev enqueue --quiet 2>/dev/null

If the file is missing, run roborev install-hook to create it.

Check the daemon is running

The hook enqueues commits, but the daemon must be running to process the queue. Check with:

roborev status

If the daemon is stopped, start it:

roborev daemon start

roborev init starts the daemon automatically, but it won’t survive a reboot unless you’ve set up a launchd/systemd service. If the daemon was running but reviews still aren’t appearing, check the daemon log for errors:

roborev daemon run 2>&1 | head -50

Post-commit hook log

roborev logs every post-commit hook invocation to ~/.roborev/post-commit.log as JSONL. Each entry records a timestamp, the repository path, the outcome (ok or error), and a reason when the hook skips or fails. This is useful for diagnosing silent hook failures, especially in linked git worktrees where path resolution issues can prevent the hook from firing.

# View the last few hook invocations
tail -5 ~/.roborev/post-commit.log | jq .

Mangled hook file

Other tools (Husky, lefthook, pre-commit, overcommit) can overwrite or corrupt the post-commit hook. Symptoms include:

A stray fi with no matching if
Missing roborev enqueue line
The hook file containing only another tool’s boilerplate

To diagnose, inspect the hook file and look for the roborev enqueue call. If it’s missing or the file looks wrong, reinstall:

roborev install-hook --force

If your repo uses a hook manager, you may need to add the roborev enqueue call to your hook manager’s post-commit configuration instead. See Review Hooks for details on hook managers and core.hooksPath.

The nuclear option

If the above steps don’t resolve the issue, reset everything:

Replace just the hook with a known-good version:

roborev install-hook --force

This overwrites the existing post-commit hook entirely.

Full reset: re-initialize the repo, daemon, and hook from scratch:

roborev init --force

This is the “nuke it from orbit” option: it re-registers the repo with the daemon, reinstalls the hook, and restarts the daemon. Use this when you’re not sure what’s wrong and want a clean slate.