Subversion hooks consistently fail for operations performed in VisualSVN Server Manager

Applies to: VisualSVN Server 2.0, 2.1

Symptoms

When you attempt to create or remove folder in VisualSVN Server Manager you may receive one of the following error messages:

Error: Commit blocked by pre-commit hook (exit code 1) with no output.
Commit succeeded, but post-commit hook failed post-commit hook failed (exit code 1) with no output.

You receive the error message regardless of the hook content. Behavior and the error message text depend on whether you have post-commit and/or pre-commit hooks configured for the repository:

  • Repository folder creation or removal doesn't happen if pre-commit hook is configured.
  • If only post-commit hook is configured, you receive the error message but repository folder is created or removed succesfully. You have to refresh the management console (press the F5 shortcut) in order to see the change in VisualSVN Server Manager.

Cause

This is a non-critical bug in VisualSVN Server Manager which occurs when you have pre-commit or post-commit hooks configured for your repository. The issue affects only VisualSVN Server Manager and doesn't occur when you use standard Subversion clients to create and/or remove repository folders.

Workaround

As a workaround, we advise to manage repository folders through standard Subversion clients. For example, you can easily manage the content of your repositories using the Repository Browser in TortoiseSVN or using standard Subversion command-line client.

For example, you may create repository folders using the svn mkdir command with the following steps (consider the svn mkdir reference for the details):

  1. Start VisualSVN Server Manager.
  2. Start command line interpreter using the Action | All Tasks | Start Command Prompt menu command.
  3. Execute the following command line:
    svn mkdir -m "Created new folder" https://svn.contoso.com/svn/repository/folder
Note
When you manage repository folders using standard Subversion clients, please make sure that you have appropriate Subversion permissions. For further details refer to the article "Understanding VisualSVN Server authorization".

Status

The issue is resolved in VisualSVN Server 2.5: starting from this version, VisualSVN Server Manager bypasses execution of Subversion hooks. For further details please consider the KB55 article.

See also

KB55: VisualSVN Server Manager bypasses execution of Subversion hooks

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