How can I prevent users from committing binaries into subversion?

Question

I have a headstrong user who stubbornly insists on committing his binaries (executables, DLLs) into our subversion repositories. I'd go in and delete them, but of course nothing is ever really deleted from subversion.

While there are times when we need to commit binaries, I don't want users doing it as a matter of routine. I can set an ignore property but that doesn't prevent users from committing binaries if they are really determined. What I'd like to do is be able to control the ability to commit nominated file types, particularly .exe and .dll files, on a directory-by-directory basis.

Is there a way to do that in SVN? If it makes any differentce, we are using VisualSVN server and TortoiseSVN.

Answer 1

Write a pre-commit hook that checks added files whether they fit your criteria.

You could use pre-commit-check.py as a starting point.

Answer 2

You can use a pre-commit hook. You'll have to write a simple program (in any language) which returns a non-zero value if the file is binary.

See here for generic documentation about repository hooks, and here for a python example from Apache.

You could look at the files names, or use file to look at their types.

Answer 3

You could use a pre-commit hook script that checks if the file is binary or textual.

Answer 4

On TortoiseSVN you can have the user add .dll, .exe, etc to the ignore list. That way, they user won't accidentally check them in. See here for more info:

http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-dug-ignore.html

On the server side, as others have stated, you can use a hook script.

Answer 5

Here is a small hooks script which is doing what you want: You have to configure 2 things:

• illegal_suffixes: a python list with all suffixes which should abort the commit
• cmdSVNLOOK: the path to svnlook program

import sys
import subprocess 
import re

#this is a list of illegal suffixes:
illegal_suffixes = ['.exe','.dll']

# Path to svnlook command:
cmdSVNLOOK="/usr/bin/svnlook";

def isIllegalSuffix(progname):
    for suffix in illegal_suffixes:
        if (ptFilename.endswith(suffix)):
            return True
    return False

######### main program ################
repopath = sys.argv[1]
transact = sys.argv[2]

retVal = 0
svninfo = subprocess.Popen([cmdSVNLOOK, 'changed', '-t', transact, repopath], 
                                                        stdout = subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
(stdout, stderr) = svninfo.communicate();

prog = re.compile('(^[ACUDRM_])[ACUDRM]*\s+(.+)')  # regex for svnlook output
for line in stdout.split("\n"):
    if (line.strip()!=""):
        match=re.search(prog, line.strip())
        if match:
            mode = match.group(1) 
            ptFilename = match.group(2)
            if mode == 'A' and isIllegalSuffix(ptFilename): 
              retVal = 1
              sys.stderr.write("Please do not add the following ")
              sys.stderr.write("filetypes to repository:\n")
              sys.stderr.write(str(illegal_suffixes)+"\n")
              break
        else:
            sys.stderr.write("svnlook output parsing failed!\n")
            retVal = 1
            break
    else:
        # an empty line is fine!
        retVal = 0
sys.exit(retVal)