Sanity check pre-commit hook for SVN

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When committing to SVN, “there is no reset button”. You cannot purge the memory of a commit once it has been made in an SVN repo (e.g. a theme on WordPress.com VIP, a plugin in the WordPress.org directory, or even especially WordPress core at develop.svn.wordpress.org). That is, in SVN there is no commit amending, hard reset, or force push like in Git (git commit --amend && git push -f or git reset --hard HEAD^ && git push -f). For this reason, it is extra important to double and triple check SVN commits when you make them. In Git, a pre-commit hook can be installed which runs before the commit is made. While SVN also supports pre-commit hooks, there is no built-in client-side pre-commit hook facility: the SVN pre-commit hook has to be installed on the server, something that is usually not an option.

So here is another solution: create a Bash function that wraps around the svn command on your PATH. This function can show you the repo URL you are committing to as the first sanity check, followed by a list of the changed files to be committed, a countdown timer for good measure, and finally a Y/N prompt to proceed with the commit. Consider this svn Bash function:

Add this to your .bashrc or .bash_profile and the next time you do svn commit you’ll get an experience like this:

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