Q:

Windows Pre-commit hook for comment length Subversion

I seem to be getting nowhere with this.  Either searching the web for a script, etc.  Anyone got a script that you can just edit the out-of-box pre-commit.tmpl in a Windows environment that requires x chars to be entered in for a comment on commit in Tortoise Subversion globally so that all members on the team are required whereas this requirement is pushed down to the clients from SVN server?
I don't know the scripting language and this should be something pretty damn simple without me taking the time to figure out scripting for the next 3 hours.

A:

This is a .bat file to require there is a comment.  It checks for the existence of at least one character in the comment.
 @echo off  
 :: Stops commits that have empty log messages.        
 @echo off  

 setlocal  

 rem Subversion sends through the path to the repository and transaction id  
 set REPOS=%1  
 set TXN=%2           

 svnlook log %REPOS% -t %TXN% | findstr . > nul  
 if %errorlevel% gtr 0 (goto err) else exit 0  

 :err  
 echo. 1>&2  
 echo Your commit has been blocked because you didn't enter a comment. 1>&2  
 echo Write a log message describing the changes made and try again. 1>&2
 echo Thanks 1>&2
 exit 1

This file sits in the /hooks folder of the repository, named pre-commit.bat.  If you need a minimum amount of characters, the line to modify is
svnlook log %REPOS% -t %TXN% | findstr . > nul

So if you wanted a minimum of 10 characters, you need to have 10 .'s rather than just one
svnlook log %REPOS% -t %TXN% | findstr .......... > nul

More advanced options for the findstr command will let you do fancier checks (certain character sets, ect)

