Programming Post-Commit Hooks for Subversion with Python

I am a regular user of Subversion, all my important TeX files are stored in a SVN repository. SVN has a few builtin hooks, which means at certain events certain scripts are called. The following templates can be found in the hooks subdirectory of the server repository:

  • post-commit.tmpl
  • post-lock.tmpl
  • post-revprop-change.tmpl
  • post-unlock.tmpl
  • pre-commit.tmpl
  • pre-lock.tmpl
  • pre-revprop-change.tmpl
  • pre-unlock.tmpl
  • start-commit.tmpl

It does not matter in what kind of language the scripts are written, Subversion only cares if an executable script (or *.exe file with this name) is present (remove ‚.tmpl‘ at the end of a script to activate it). Today, after reading http://palita.net/2011/08/24/svn-hooks-automatischer-checkout-nach-commits/, I was interested in writing a small Python script which notifies me if a commit has taken place. Based on some e-mail script from http://segfault.in/2010/12/sending-gmail-from-python/ and the argparse tutorial I managed to finish this script in just a few minutes. argparse is needed since Subversion calls the post-commit script with two parameters, the path to the repository and the version of the commit.

One note on the Google password: It is recommended to use application-specific passwords, see http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1173270 for details.

#!/usr/bin/python
 
import smtplib # part of standard installation
import argparse # not part of standard installation
 
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument("path", help="path to the repository on the server")
parser.add_argument("version", help="version of the commit")
 
args = parser.parse_args()
print args.path
print args.version
 
server = 'smtp.gmail.com'
port = 587
 
sender = '<sender mail address>'
recipient = '<receiver mail address>'
password = "<password>"
subject = 'SVN Commit'
body = 'SVN Commit: '
 
body = body +  args.path + ' ' +  args.version
 
headers = ["From: " + sender,
           "Subject: " + subject,
           "To: " + recipient,
           "MIME-Version: 1.0",
           "Content-Type: text/html"]
headers = "\r\n".join(headers)
 
session = smtplib.SMTP(server, port)
 
session.ehlo()
session.starttls()
session.ehlo
session.login(sender, password)
 
session.sendmail(sender, recipient, headers + "\r\n\r\n" + body)
session.quit()

Deutsche Zusammenfassung: Subversion stellt gewisse Einsprungspunkte bereit, zu denen man eigene Skripte ausführen kann. Mit Python lässt sich recht einfach ein Skript schreiben, das einen Nutzer über z.B. ein Commit informiert.

Uwe

Uwe Ziegenhagen likes LaTeX and Python, sometimes even combined. Do you like my content and would like to thank me for it? Consider making a small donation to my local fablab, the Dingfabrik Köln. Details on how to donate can be found here Spenden für die Dingfabrik.

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