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C.5: Verifying log messages

Once you have entered a log message, you can evaluate that message to check for specific content, such as a bug ID. Use the `verifymsg' file to specify a program that is used to verify the log message. This program could be a simple script that checks that the entered message contains the required fields.

The `verifymsg' file is often most useful together with the `rcsinfo' file, which can be used to specify a log message template.

Each line in the `verifymsg' file consists of a regular expression and a command-line template. The template must include a program name, and can include any number of arguments. The full path to the current log message template file is appended to the template.

One thing that should be noted is that the `ALL' keyword is not supported. If more than one matching line is found, the first one is used. This can be useful for specifying a default verification script in a module, and then overriding it in a subdirectory.

If the repository name does not match any of the regular expressions in this file, the `DEFAULT' line is used, if it is specified.

If the verification script exits with a non-zero exit status, the commit is aborted.

Note that the verification script cannot change the log message; it can merely accept it or reject it.

The following is a little silly example of a `verifymsg' file, together with the corresponding `rcsinfo' file, the log message template and an verification script. We begin with the log message template. We want to always record a bug-id number on the first line of the log message. The rest of log message is free text. The following template is found in the file `/usr/cvssupport/tc.template'.

BugId:

The script `/usr/cvssupport/bugid.verify' is used to evaluate the log message.

#!/bin/sh
#
#       bugid.verify filename
#
#  Verify that the log message contains a valid bugid
#  on the first line.
#
if head -1 < $1 | grep '^BugId:[ ]*[0-9][0-9]*$' > /dev/null; then
    exit 0
else
    echo "No BugId found."
    exit 1
fi

The `verifymsg' file contains this line:

^tc     /usr/cvssupport/bugid.edit

The `rcsinfo' file contains this line:

^tc     /usr/cvssupport/tc.template

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