Setup and test svn post-commit hook to send commit log —05 June 2012
It’s been a while since I’ve done this, and the tools have evolved since then. Follow these steps to configure, test first, and in the end activate the hook.
Get the sample mailer script
This may depend on your distro/OS, usually there is a package called subversion-tools.
cd $REPOROOT
cp /path/to/subversion-tools/hook-scripts/mailer/mailer.py hooks
cp /path/to/subversion-tools/hook-scripts/mailer/mailer.conf.example mailer.conf
Edit mailer.conf
In my case I only needed to override/uncomment these settings:
mail_command = /usr/sbin/sendmail
commit_subject_prefix = [svn-myproject]
from_addr = noreply@mydomain.com
to_addr = commits-myproject@mydomain.com # this is a mailing list
Pick a revision number for testing
You can pick any revision, just make sure it exists. You can find the latest revision like this:
svnlook info $REPOROOT
svnlook youngest $REPOROOT
Test the hook script
Confirm that the last line of the hook script template ($REPOROOT/hooks/post-commit.tmpl) is the same as this:
"$REPOS"/hooks/mailer.py commit "$REPOS" $REV "$REPOS"/mailer.conf
This is the default on recent versions of Linux. It uses the absolute path to mailer.py and mailer.conf, at the locations where we copied them in an earlier step. The correct path is important, otherwise you will get errors like “mailer.py: command not found”
Run the hook script:
sh $REPOROOT/hooks/post-commit.tmpl $REPOROOT $REVNO
where $REVNO is some revision number (for example the one returned by svnlook youngest). After this you should receive an email with the details of the commit, or some error message should appear in the terminal that you can debug.
Activate the hook
cd $REPOROOT
chmod +x hooks/post-commit.tmpl
mv hooks/post-commit.tmpl hooks/post-commit
That’s it! Note that it is important to remove hooks/post-commit.tmpl file (or truncate to 0 size), otherwise the real hook script (without .tmpl extension) will be ignored. The hook script should be executable, otherwise Subversion will not run it.