Subversion Post-Commit Hooks 101

The “Hello World!” of Subversion post-commit hooks is the use of SVNnotify to send e-mails out to a project team every time a new revision is committed to the repository.

This is easier than it sounds:

1. Make sure svnnotify is installed on your system. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

2. Navigate to your repository’s hooks directory. This is almost always a directory cleverly named “hooks” right inside the top level of your repository:

   cd /Users/mwest/svn/my_repository/hooks/
   

3. Create a new file called post-commit, and make it executable by the www user.

   touch ./post-commit
   chmod 755 ./post-commit
   

4. Open up the file you just created, and add the following bit of code:

   #!/bin/sh
   
   REPOS="$1"
   REV="$2"
   
   /usr/local/bin/svnnotify                    \
       --repos-path    "$REPOS"                \
       --revision      "$REV"                  \
       --subject-cx                            \
       --with-diff                             \
       --handler       HTML::ColorDiff         \
       --to            <your e-mail address>   \
       --from          <from e-mail address>
   

   It’s all pretty straightforward, so let’s take it line by line:

   • The first line is the so-called shebang that tells the system that the file is a shell script that ought be executed.

   • Next, we set two variables based on the information that Subversion passes into the script when it’s called. The post-commit hook gets two bits of data: the path to the repository, and the new revision number that the commit created.

   • Finally, we call svnnotify to actually generate and send a nicely formatted e-mail using the repository path and revision number that we gathered earlier. Make sure to put your e-mail address (or list’s address) in the last two lines!

5. Do some work, and commit it.

6. Check your e-mail.

7. Bask in the glorious glow of a really, really useful tool.

For further reading on the nine hooks provided by Subversion, visit the “Hook Scripts” section of Version Control with Subversion.