Common Types of Subversion Hooks

Question

I am using the pre-revprop-change hook that allows me to actually go back and edit comments and such information after the commit has been performed. This is very useful if there is missing/erroneous information in the commit comments.

Here I post a pre-revprop-change.bat batch file for Windows NT or later. You can certainly enhance it with more modifications. You can also derive a post-revprop-change.cmd from it to back up the old snv:log somewhere or just to append it to the new log.

The only tricky part was to be able to actually parse the stdin from the batch file. This is done here with the FIND.EXE command.

The other thing is that I have had reports from other users of issues with the use of the /b with the exit command. You may just need to remove that /b in your specific application if error cases do not behave well.

@ECHO OFF

set repos=%1
set rev=%2
set user=%3
set propname=%4
set action=%5

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Only allow changes to svn:log. The author, date and other revision
:: properties cannot be changed
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
if /I not '%propname%'=='svn:log' goto ERROR_PROPNAME

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Only allow modifications to svn:log (no addition/overwrite or deletion)
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
if /I not '%action%'=='M' goto ERROR_ACTION

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Make sure that the new svn:log message contains some text.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
set bIsEmpty=true
for /f "tokens=*" %%g in ('find /V ""') do (
 set bIsEmpty=false
)
if '%bIsEmpty%'=='true' goto ERROR_EMPTY

goto :eof



:ERROR_EMPTY
echo Empty svn:log properties are not allowed. >&2
goto ERROR_EXIT

:ERROR_PROPNAME
echo Only changes to svn:log revision properties are allowed. >&2
goto ERROR_EXIT

:ERROR_ACTION
echo Only modifications to svn:log revision properties are allowed. >&2
goto ERROR_EXIT

:ERROR_EXIT
exit /b 1 

If you have a mix of unix and Windows users working with the repository, I urge you to use the case-insensitive.py pre-commit hook-script as a precautionary measure. It prevents hard-to-sort-out situations where svn updates fail for Windows users because of a file rename which only changed the case of the file name. Believe me, there is a good chance it will save you trouble.

We use FogBugz for bug tracking, it provides subversion commit scripts that allow you to include a case number in your check in comments and then associates the bug with the check in that fixed it. It does require a WebSVN instance to be set up so that you have a web based viewer for your repository.

In my work place we've set up a post-commit hook that generates RSS feeds that are displayed in various dash boards and are used for code reviewers to know when it is time to review and for us to see that new employees are committing enough.

several things we use them for:

• integrating with the bug tracker (Trac in our case - a commit message that says 'Closes #514' automatically marks that bug as closed
• integrating with the build integration (buildbot in our case - a commit to a watched branch triggers a build
• pre-commit hook for validating the commit - we use svnchecker. It validates our Python code for PEP8 correctness
• sending checkin mails to a mailing list
• running indentation scripts