Subversion: Add revision data to code file on commit

svn

Is there an easy way to, on commit of a file, automatically insert information into the code file itself (like author, commit comment, commit date, etc)? I would want this information appended to a block at the top of each committed file. Essentially the entire revision history should be documented in each code file…

I see there is a way to use subversion properties to achieve something similar, but I don't see how to get the actual commit comment into the file, and also I don't see how to keep a running log that has the entire revision history as opposed to just the last commit information.

I don't personally think this is a good idea as the code file should just have code in it, but unfortunately this is a requirement for my current project.

Best Answer

Subversion supports various keywords like $Id$, $Author$, $Revision$ and so on. To use those you need to set the svn:keywords property accordingly. However, you can't insert the commit comment like $Log$ does. See the subversion FAQ for the reasons about this, and I can only agree with the reasons given there. Putting the commit comments into the file is simply broken by design, and any such comment is wrong the moment you can't check it against the repository.

Other version control systems also don't support this, and most of them with a similar reasoning (for example, git).

Please don't argue with something like that being a "requirement for the project". If released code has to include a change history you can add this history when creating the release with some helper script rather easily. At least, subversion simply doesn't support it. And I would strongly discourage trying to achive this with a pre-commit hook. Commit hooks should never change the data that gets committed.

Related Topic