Forbidding SVN commit lacking description

Question

I have an SVN repository and I need the commits to fail if no description is entered. Is this possible to do, preferably server-side? (The users use several different tools for interacting with the repository; although if this were possible client-side in TortoiseSVN, that would alleviate the problem)

Google has not been very helpful, can you give me some pointers?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Yup, you'll want to write a pre-commit hook in the repository which fails with an appropriate error message to send back to the client.

If you look in the "hooks" directory of a freshly created repository, you'll find a pre-commit.tmpl file. That contains instructions, and the sample even checks that the log message contains text - just what you want.

So, you should be able to rename pre-commit.tmpl to pre-commit and make it executable, then give it a whirl. I suggest you try it on a sandbox repository before a production one though, to avoid angry users being unable to commit while you get it right :)

Answer 2

You can do that using repository hooks. In your case, you want a pre-commit hook that will check the message and reject the commit if it is empty.

Answer 3

The FreeBSD project has some examples you may want to use. See the public svn repo with hooks.