How to require commit messages in VisualSVN server?
hook, notifications, svn, svn-hooks, visualsvn-server
Solution
VisualSVN Server 3.9 provides the `VisualSVNServerHooks.exe check-logmessage` pre-commit hook that helps you reject commits with empty or short log messages. See the article KB140: Validating commit log messages in VisualSVN Server for instructions.
Besides the built-in `VisualSVNServerHooks.exe`, VisualSVN Server and SVN in general uses a number of hooks to accomplish tasks like this.
- `start-commit` — run before commit transaction begins, can be used to do special permission checking
- `pre-commit` — run at the end of the transaction, but before commit. Often used to validate things such as a non zero length log message.
- `post-commit` — runs after the transaction has been committed. Can be used for sending emails, or backing up repository.
- `pre-revprop-change` — runs before a revision property change. Can be used to check permissions.
- `post-revprop-change` — runs after a revision property change. Can be used to email or backup these changes.
You need to use the `pre-commit` hook. You can write it yourself in just about any language your platform supports, but there are a number of scripts on the web. Googling "svn precommit hook to require comment" I found a couple that looked like they would fit the bill:
- Perl Script
- Python Script
Problem
We've got VisualSVN Server set up as our Subversion server on Windows, and we use Ankhsvn + TortoiseSVN as clients on our workstations. How can you configure the server to require commit messages to be non-empty?