Question

Is there a way to make it so that if I call $ svn ci -m "some message" it yells at me for not specifying the files I want to check in?

I would be fine with it either just asking me to confirm that I want to check in the whole directory, or just canceling the operation.

Normally I try to be verbose and tell SVN the files I want to check in, but occasionally I forgot and end up checking in more than I wanted to.

Answer 1

Before I get to your answer, I want to make sure you understand how Subversion works.

Subversion looks at changes as a changelist and not as individual file changes. That’s why the entire repository revision is incremented whenever there’s a commit and not just individual files.

Many people who are use to version control systems that don’t handle changelists do things like this:

$ svn commit file1
$ svn commit file2
$ svn commit file3

This is bad because it breaks the concept of the change list. If file1, file2, and file3 are all related to a single change, they should be committed together.

The standard way of using Subversion it to work on a single change list at a time. You work fixing a bug or adding a feature, commit your changes, then work on the next bug or feature. If you are working on two separate bugs or features at the same time, you should really have two separate checkouts.

Doing it that way would allow you to use svn commit to commit your change list as a single unit.

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That said, there is a way to change that behavior of a Subversion commit if you don’t list any files and that is by defining your own svn function and an alias to the svn command.

For example, in Kornshell, there is no easy way of changing the prompt when you do a cd to reflect the directory you’re in. To get around this, you create a _cd function that changes the directory and the prompt. Then, you alias the cd command to your _cd function.

In your case, you’ll define a _svn function that looks at the first parameter and sees whether it is commit. If it’s not, you can safely execute the actual svn command. If the first parameter is commit, you can then look to see if there is a second parameter. If there isnt’, you can assume you forgot to list files, and exit out. The function would look something like this:

function _svn {
  if [[ $1 == "commit" ]] && [[ -z $2 ]]
  then
      echo "You need to specify the exact files to commit"
      exit 2
  else
     \svn $*
  fi

Then, you create an alias:

alias svn="_svn"

Now, executing svn won’t run the svn command (at least directly). Instead, your alias will run the _svn function.

By the way, I’m not assuming any parameter handling in my function. (What if you add -m "this is a test") or–username bob –password swordfish` to the command?). You’ll have to extend the function to handle parameters to the commit command. However, this gives you the general idea how you can change a command’s functionality to do things like this.