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# Version control integration

Use pre-commit. Once you have it installed, add this to the `.pre-commit-config.yaml` in your repository:

    repos:
      # Using this mirror lets us use mypyc-compiled black, which is about 2x faster
      - repo: https://github.com/psf/black-pre-commit-mirror
        rev: 26.3.1
        hooks:
          - id: black
            # It is recommended to specify the latest version of Python
            # supported by your project here, or alternatively use
            # pre-commit's default_language_version, see
            # https://pre-commit.com/#top_level-default_language_version
            language_version: python3.11

Feel free to switch out the `rev` value to a different version of Black.

Note if you’d like to use a specific commit in `rev`, you’ll need to swap the repo specified from the mirror to https://github.com/psf/black. We discourage the use of branches or other mutable refs since the hook won’t auto update as you may expect.

## Jupyter Notebooks

There is an alternate hook `black-jupyter` that expands the targets of `black` to include Jupyter Notebooks. To use this hook, simply replace the hook’s `id: black` with `id: black-jupyter` in the `.pre-commit-config.yaml`:

    repos:
      - repo: https://github.com/psf/black-pre-commit-mirror
        rev: 26.3.1
        hooks:
          - id: black-jupyter
            language_version: python3.11

Note

The `black-jupyter` hook became available in version 21.8b0.

See the Jupyter Notebooks guide for more details.

## Excluding files with pre-commit

When using pre-commit, there’s an important distinction in how file exclusions work. Pre-commit passes files directly to Black via the command line, rather than letting Black discover files recursively. This means Black’s `--exclude` option won’t work as expected because it only applies to files discovered during recursive directory traversal.

To exclude files when using pre-commit, you have two options:

### Option 1: Use pre-commit’s exclude (Recommended)

Configure exclusions directly in `.pre-commit-config.yaml`:

    repos:
      - repo: https://github.com/psf/black-pre-commit-mirror
        rev: 26.3.1
        hooks:
          - id: black
            exclude: ^migrations/|^generated/

This is the recommended approach because pre-commit filters files before passing them to Black, avoiding unnecessary processing.

### Option 2: Use Black’s force-exclude in pyproject.toml

Black’s `force-exclude` configuration option excludes files even when they are passed explicitly as command-line arguments (which is how pre-commit invokes Black). Simply add the pattern to your `pyproject.toml`:

    [tool.black]
    force-exclude = '''
    (
      ^migrations/
      | ^generated/
    )
    '''

Black automatically reads this configuration—no additional CLI arguments are needed in your `.pre-commit-config.yaml`.

Note

The `force-exclude` option was added in version 20.8b0 specifically to support workflows where files are passed directly via CLI, such as pre-commit hooks and editor plugins.