One of git's unavoidable quirks is its inability to store and retrieve metadata about a file. For example, on the mac, labels are stored with "extended attributes" (accessible with xattr), and any checkout/reset/merge/pull command will erase those attributes if the file is affected by the checkout.

I've looked around to see if someone has written metadata-saving scripts already, but I came up dry.

So what I'd like to do is use Git's hook system to:

  1. Read extended attributes when files are committed,
  2. Write the attributes to a file stored in the repository that also gets committed,
  3. Apply the extended attributes to files that are modified in a merge/checkout/reset.

Which of the hooks should I use? Are post-receive and pre-commit all that I need? Can pre-commit also add a file to the commit (i.e., after writing the new attributes)?

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