Email Notifications with Subversion Revision as of Monday, 21 December 2015 at 02:30 UTC

Pre-Flight

• Running SubVersion 1.4.2 on CentOS 5.5 (x64)
• For this guide, my repository is located at /home/svn/repository
• I’ll be using mailer.py instead of commit-email.pl
  • The former is more configurable and can be used on a
    per-directory basis. This is useful if you have many projects in
    a single repo.

Setup

Copy over the sample post-commit hook

Permissions and ownership are vitally important here!

 cp hooks/post-commit.tmpl hooks/post-commit
 chmod 770 hooks/post-commit
 chown apache:apache hooks/post-commit

Now edit hooks/post-commit and add this line:

 /usr/share/doc/subversion-1.4.2/tools/hook-scripts/mailer/mailer.py commit "$REPOS" "$REV"

Comment out these lines:

 commit-email.pl "$REPOS" "$REV" commit-watchers@example.org
 log-commit.py --repository "$REPOS" --revision "$REV"

Configure email alerts for a repository

First copy over the sample mailer config:

 cp /usr/share/doc/subversion-1.4.2/tools/hook-scripts/mailer/mailer.conf.example conf/mailer.conf

A general file looks like this:

 [general]
 mail_command = /usr/sbin/sendmail
 smtp_hostname = localhost
 
 [defaults]
 diff = /usr/bin/diff -u -L %(label_from)s -L %(label_to)s %(from)s %(to)s
 commit_subject_prefix = "[SVN - IT Scripts]"
 propchange_subject_prefix =
 lock_subject_prefix =
 unlock_subject_prefix =
 from_addr = donotreply@svn.eng.uiowa.edu
 to_addr = nikhil-anand@uiowa.edu anand.nikhil@gmail.com
 reply_to = donotreply@svn.eng.uiowa.edu
 generate_diffs = add copy modify
 show_nonmatching_paths = yes
 suppress_deletes = yes
   
 [maps]

The various options should be self-explanatory. A test commit should
work at this point.

Configuring alerts for specific folders

Let’s say that a specific group of people is to know if commits are made
to the firewall_scripts folder. In that case:

 [firewall_scripts]
 for_paths = ^firewall_scripts($|/)
 commit_subject_prefix = "[SVN - Firewall Scripts]"
 from_addr = donotreply@svn.eng.uiowa.edu
 to_addr = it-admins@genome.uiowa.edu

Testing things out

You don’t necessarily need to commit things to test out the config.

 sh hooks/post-commit /home/svn/repository 195

Where the last two arguments are the path to the repo and the revision
number.

Tip of the Iceberg

There are tons of things you can do with mailer.conf in a large
and/or complicated setting. The best way to get acquainted with its
features is to essentially read the default file to figure out what it’s
capable of. Reading others’ config files also helps :)