Vijender Loss: Is media responsible ?

It was 10th September 2009, when I read the news that our own Vijender has reached the semi final of World Boxing championship, the first from India to have ever achieved the feat. Needless to say, I was elated with the News, that India is now gathering momentum in its zest towards sports.
But then what struck me is the hype, that media has made out of it. The questions like, 'Hows your feeling at this moment, or 'Are you feeling the burden of a billion people of India, watching you' can put any strong man, to inevitable pressure and Vijendar was not any different.

So when the news broke out that our boxer has lost in the semis, fighting to an opponent(Atoev) whom he has defeated, a couple of months ago in the Asian championship in China, my first thought was, 'Was he in too much pressure to perform'. May be or may be not, the idea is very much debatable but was media a very strong contender for his loss, many of us can really give a reply in resonance.

At time of Beijing Olympic, when he was just a normal Indian contender, there wasn't much speculation, media hype or hope, but his win changed the whole scenario. We expected him to do the same in Asian Championship and he delivered it. Now, the expectation from him, was in all time high and media played its part. Its a very positive sign that coverage of sports other than cricket is done extensively, at the moment when India is playing a tri-series, but the question still remains, do media over hype the thing and is it really able to bring the exact feelings of Indian mass and present it well too, the way it should be doing, which at present seems a distant dream.

Creating a post-commit hook in PHP

In my earlier pots, I elaborated how to create a pre-commit svn hook in PHP, for avoiding commits without adding comments.

Here I am going to elaborate step by step, to make a post-commit svn hook, for sending emails to all the members who are concerned with the application, when its committed.

Objective :

To create a post-commit hook in PHP, such that when any commit is done, a mail is sent to all members whose email id is configured in the system.

Step-by-step Execution :
1. Create a svn application directory.

Ex: Create a svn repository for the application router,

Command: svnadmin create /usr/local/svn/router (The path can be changed)

2) In the directory, /usr/local/svn/router/hooks/ rename the file post-commit.tmpl to post-commit.

Add the following lines of codes to it, with assumption that php interpreter is present at /usr/bin/php

#!/usr/bin/php
$REPOS=$argv[1];
$REV=$argv[2];

$application=end(explode("/",$REPOS));
$author=`/usr/bin/svnlook author -r $REV $REPOS`;
$comment_added=`/usr/bin/svnlook log -r $REV $REPOS`;

$domain='@anydomain.com';
$from=trim($author).trim($domain);
$subject="SVN Commit Notification for $application";
$message="Committed by :"."\n".$author;
$message.="\n\n"."Commit comments :"."\n". $comment_added;

$file_path = $REPOS.'/hooks/email.txt';
$email_array=explode(",",file_get_contents($file_path));

$headers = 'From: '.$from."\r\n".'Date: '.date('r')."\r\n".'MIME-Version: 1.0'."\r\n".'Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit'."\r\n".'Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1'."\r\n";

foreach($email_array as $ea)
{
$return_mail = mail($ea,$subject,$message,$headers);
}
?>

You need to add a file email.txt in the /usr/local/svn/hooks/ directory which contains a comma separated list of email ids, without any spaces and new lines.
Ex: first@anydomain.com,second@anydomain.com,third@anydomain.com

Checkout the repository, in your local directory, make some modification and try now to commit, without providing any comment.

After committing the code an email will be send to all email ids, in the email.txt file.

A few details :
In the post-commit hook, svn passes 2 parameters to it, namely repository name and revision number. We can make use of these parameters, to send information as required, in the mail.

Creating a pre-commit svn hook in PHP

SVN is used for varied reasons. We can jump back, having a versioned backup, share-coding with others – its really awesome.

But then the complexities grows, when we have multiple users, accessing the same repository, which includes proper commenting when the commit is done or mail need to be sent to all the members affected with that particular application and etc..etc...

To ease out these particular complexities, svn provides many hooks which we can add/modify in the svn directory.The complete details about the hooks can be found at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch05s02.html

Objective :

To create a pre-commit hook in PHP, such that no commit made without adding any comments.

Step-by-step execution :

1. Create a svn application directory.

Ex: Create a svn repository for the application router,

Command: svnadmin create /usr/local/svn/router

2) In the directory, /usr/local/svn/router/hooks/ rename the file pre-commit.tmpl to pre-commit.

Add the following lines of codes to it.

#!/usr/bin/php
$REPOS=$argv[1];
$TXN=$argv[2];
$log=trim(`/usr/bin/svnlook log -t $TXN $REPOS`);
if(empty($log))
{
fwrite(STDERR,"Empty log messages are not allowed, Please provide a proper log message");
exit(1);
}
exit(0);
?>

Checkout the repository, in your local directory, make some modification and try now to commit, without providing any comment.

An error message will be thrown and the commit will fail.

A few details:

Whenever COMMIT is done, svn passes two parameters to the pre-commit executable, one is repository name and other is transaction id. You can view, whats being added in the log, by svnlook command. For options available with svnlook, just type in svnlook help. Now if the log message is empty, an error will be thrown and the it must be directed to STDERR.