It shouldn't be that difficult to create client side commit hooks in Subversion. I'm beginning to stumble upon the serious limitations of the centralized distribution model. Very simply, I want the output from @svn diff | diffstat@ included in my commit messages. "This guy":http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4798201/client-side-pre-commit-hooks-in-subversion gets a very straight forward answer. * "Version Control with Subversion":http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.6/index.html * "A Subversion Pre-Commit Hook":http://wordaligned.org/articles/a-subversion-pre-commit-hook * "How to force Comments on SVN Commit":http://www.anujgakhar.com/2008/02/14/how-to-force-comments-on-svn-commit/ * "How to use pre commit hook in SVN to return revision number of the repository?":http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3423182/how-to-use-pre-commit-hook-in-svn-to-return-revision-number-of-the-repository * "Tortoise SVN Client Side Hook Scripts":http://sfalla.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/tortoise-svn-client-side-hook-scripts/ * "client side pre-commit hooks in subversion":http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4798201/client-side-pre-commit-hooks-in-subversion * "SVN client side hook":http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2916098/svn-client-side-hook You find quickly that this sucks. However, it says "here":http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.6/svn.advanced.confarea.html#svn.advanced.confarea.opts.config in the manual that a per-user configuration is possible to some extent in the @~/.subversion@ folder. But this doesn't get you very far. Looking at these two places: * "Sending Subversion Diffs for Commit Messages":http://push.cx/2007/seeing-subversion-diffs-for-commit-messages * "Subversion Dev: Re: Diffs into default log template":http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2004-10/1146.shtml I resolved to creating the following scripts: 
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#!/bin/bash
# File: svnci.sh

SVN=svn # for now

# Temporary template file
TMP=`mktemp`
$SVN diff |diffstat > $TMP

$SVN commit --editor-cmd="./svn-editor.sh $TMP"
p. Where @svn-editor.sh@ is the following script 
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#!/bin/bash
# File: svn-editor.sh

SVNCITMP=svnci.tmp

# backup original text
cp $2 $SVNCITMP

# Build message template
echo > $2
echo >> $2
cat $1 >> $2
cat $SVNCITMP >> $2

# clean up
rm $SVNCITMP $1

vim $2
p. @$1@ is the name of the temporary file created in @svnci.sh@ and @$2@ is the temporary svn commit message file (usually called @svn-commit.tmp@). Both files should be executable. The ugly thing is you _need_ two scripts to do this -- I would've preferred one. Anyhow this will create the desired effect of prepending the output from @svn diff | diffstat@ to the commit message: bc(terminal).. Pass args to svnci.sh on to svn svnci.sh | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) --This line, and those below, will be ignored-- M svnci.sh p. Now I just need to find out how to remove the blank line after the @diffstat@ output