Setting Up Git Commit Email Notifications

By Zhiqiang Ma On Dec 25, 2012

A method to send email notification to a list email addresses by the remote git server after every push from the client will be introduced.

Git commit email notification

After the client pushing to the git server, several actions are triggered. These actions are done by hooks. Hooks are scripts placed in the GITDIR/hooks directory. Here, GITDIR is the directory of the git repository on the git server. One of the trigger action is post-receive,  so we can put a executable script with name post-receive under GIT_DIR/hooks. For every push by client, post-receive will be executed to send email notification.

A sample notification email after client pushing two commits is show in the figure. The subject contains a prefix, the repository name and the last commit message. The body of the email contains the commit log and summary of the changes.

Now lets go to the detail of configuring the mechanism.

Get the post-receive script

My script that sends email like the example described above can be downloaded from: git post-receive script.

Or view the source code: git post-receive script

This script use smtp server to send email. You need to change the smtp server address at the end of the script. Simply change smtp=”smtp://smtp.cse.ust.hk” to the smtp server you use. You can not use my smtp server which is only allowed to send email without authorization inside of CSD in HKUST. If you like to use Gmail’s smtp, please refer to Sending Email from mailx Command on Linux Using Gmail’s Smtp.

This script is changed from Andy Parkins’s one which is in git’s distribution. On fedora 12, the original script can be found under /usr/share/git-core/contrib/hooks.

Put post-receive into hooks directory

After getting the post-receive script, you need to copy it to GIT_DIR/hooks/ directory on the git server.

Please note that this script should be executable. You may need to add executable mod bits to post-receive by 

chmod a+x hooks/post-receive
when you are in GITDIR.

Change repository description

The repository name in the email subject is the first line of $GITDIR/description. Change the first line of the description file to you project’s name.

Change config

The sender’s email address, the mail list and the subject prefix is defined in GIT_DIR/config file. I like to edit this config file by hand which is as easy as using git config command.

Add these line to the config file: 

[hooks]
 mailinglist = "email1@example.com email2@example.com"
 senderemail = "owner@exmaple.com"
The email addressed in mailing list is separated by space.

The default subject prefix is [GIT]. You can change it to any string you like by add hooks.emailprefix in config.

Now the email notification mechanism has been set up. You can change the script if more functions is needed.

By: Zhiqiang Ma Last updated: Dec 25, 2012 Views: 22,341
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About Zhiqiang Ma

Zhiqiang Ma is a PhD candidate at Dep. of CSE, HKUST. He is interested in system software for cloud computing, virtualization of large-scale distributed system, etc. Find Zhiqiang on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

26 Comments on Setting Up Git Commit Email Notifications | Add Comment
  • Paul Theodoropoulos says on April 16, 2013 at 3:13 AM:

    Hi,
    I’ve been tasked with implementing this on our local gitlab server (v3.0.3). I’ve gone the the various configuration steps listed above, and was just about to put the script into the git hooks dir – but then I found that post-receive is currently a link to
    post-receive -> /home/git/.gitolite/hooks/common/post-receive. And that is a script that part of the whole gitlab setup, containing the following:

    #!/usr/bin/env bash

    # This file was placed here by GitLab. It makes sure that your pushed commits
    # will be processed properly.

    while read oldrev newrev ref
    do
    # For every branch or tag that was pushed, create a Resque job in redis.
    pwd=`pwd`
    reponame=`basename “$pwd” | sed s/\.git$//`
    env -i redis-cli rpush “resque:queue:post_receive” “{\”class\”:\”PostReceive\”,\”args\”:[\"$reponame\",\"$oldrev\",\"$newrev\",\"$ref\",\"$G
    L_USER\"]}” > /dev/null 2>&1
    done

    So, I guess my question would be, can I just *append* this post-receive script to the bottom of that existing post-receive script? Or am I on the wrong track here….

    Reply
    • Zhiqiang Ma says on April 16, 2013 at 9:28 AM:

      Hi Paul,

      At the first glance, it should not work after simply appending the script to the bottom of your existing one.

      For example,

      Both scripts have:

      while read oldrev…

      after one script reads the input from the STDIN, the other script will fail to get it.

      But after some minor changes, it should work.

      For the example above, you may just keep (or save) these variables and change the 2nd script to use these variables instead of read them from the STDIN.

      Beside of this, you may change other minor aspects as also.

      Reply
  • Leo says on December 28, 2012 at 4:45 PM:

    Hello!

    I am trying to configure smtp like that:

    cat $email_tmp_file | mailx -v -s “$emailsubject” -s smtp-use-starttls -s ssl-verify=ignore -S smtp-auth=login -s smtp=smtp://smtp.gmail.com:587 -s from=mail@domain -s smtp-auth-user=mail@domain -s smtp-auth-password=QWERTY -s ssl-verify=ignore -r $senderemail $recipients

    But it doesn’t work at all. Where is my mistake?

    Reply
  • stuart says on September 27, 2012 at 1:51 PM:

    I’ve a remote bare repo at a windows client and when git tries to run the script it says “mailx” command not found.

    Help please!

    Reply
    • Zhiqiang Ma says on September 27, 2012 at 2:35 PM:

      This means that ‘mailx’ is not installed on the system. If you are using Fedora, try run ‘yum install mailx’ as root. On other distros, please try to install the package the provides mailx.

      Reply
  • liuzhong says on September 26, 2012 at 6:02 PM:

    my dear ma:
    last week i installed turnkey-gitlab-12.0-squeeze-x86.iso in my pc,this git system include some useful tools ,such as gitlab ,webmin.and so on .and the git server was well configured ,i could add and commit my code to the server,now i want to automaly send emails to the users in my team ,i read your article for long time ,but i can not do it ,please help me, my mail:hds1989824@163.com thank you

    Reply
    • Zhiqiang Ma says on September 27, 2012 at 9:36 AM:

      Hi liuzhong,

      I am sorry that I am not familiar with turnkey-gitlab. But if you can provide more details, I may help you to discuss / find possible solutions. You are always welcome to ask questions in the forum ( http://www.fclose.com/b/forum/linux-related-forum2/ ).

      Reply
      • liuzhong says on September 27, 2012 at 11:26 AM:

        OK ,the turnkeylinux-gitlab include gitolite gitlab ,i downloaded the iso and burn it to a cd ,it is easy to install,avoid use command mode install a lot of packages and soft if my pc’s os is ubantu or fedroa. it simple to use.but I donot know $GIT_DIR/description mean , i can not find it in my pc..
        and can you tell me your mail in order to send same pic to you ?
        at last please fogive my Chinglish. hehe

        Reply
        • Zhiqiang Ma says on September 27, 2012 at 11:39 AM:

          I see. GIT_DIR is the directory of the git repository on the git server. This is a unclear part of this tutorial. I have updated it. GIT_DIR/description is the file named description in the git repository directory.

          I prefer to discuss the question related to the posts here or in the forum. But if you want to contact me by email, please find it here: http://www.fclose.com/b/contact/

          Reply
          • hds1989824 says on September 28, 2012 at 11:03 AM:

            i am sorry ,mybe i have a mistake .i haved install a turnkeylinux on my pc somedays ago,and i found it was a debian system a few minutes ago! so i might set the post-recive files in a wrong place!not in the responsity/project/hooks/ ,your script ” on debian the hook is stored in # /usr/share/doc/git-core/contrib/hooks/post-receive-email:” ,and i will try another time. i will be carefull!

            Reply
            • Zhiqiang Ma says on October 7, 2012 at 9:18 PM:

              This script should be okay with most Linux distros including Debian. The script here is actually a modified version of the script from the git-core or similar package. You can download the script here into the hooks/ or save it to somewhere and share the script by many repositories by soft links.

              Reply
  • smh says on June 12, 2012 at 5:11 PM:

    Is it possible to display the changes made
    eg
    + some text
    - some text

    I tried adding the following to the config under [hooks]
    git show -C %s; echo

    but this hasn’t done anything

    Reply
    • Zhiqiang Ma says on June 12, 2012 at 9:45 PM:

      You may consider modifying the generate_update_branch_email() function in the script.

      For example: modifying the ‘git diff-tree –stat –summary –find-copies-harder $oldrev..$newrev’ line with the one you want.

      Reply
  • Pingback from: De svn a git en 5 minutos « Luis Uribe
  • Steven Dobbelaere says on September 27, 2011 at 3:20 PM:

    I installed the script but when I execute it in the terminal I get this error:
    “GIT_DIR not set”

    Any idea on how I can set my GIT_DIR variable
    I suspect I have to do it here:

    # — Config
    # Set GIT_DIR either from the working directory, or from the environment
    # variable.
    GIT_DIR=$(git rev-parse –git-dir 2>/dev/null)
    if [ -z "$GIT_DIR" ]; then
    echo >&2 “fatal: post-receive: GIT_DIR not set”
    exit 1
    fi

    Reply
    • Zhiqiang Ma says on September 27, 2011 at 4:09 PM:

      Hi Steven,

      This script should be run by the git server automatically. Just save a copy in hooks/post-receive in the git directory on the server side. It will be invoked automatically by git when you push to the repository.

      Reply
  • digitalpbk says on March 29, 2011 at 11:05 AM:

    Can somebody explain how to run this script from command line ?

    Reply
    • Zhiqiang Ma says on March 29, 2011 at 11:27 AM:

      This script is designed to be automatically invoked by git rather than for run from command line.

      You may consider adapting it for command line use if you like. The source code can be downloaded in the link in the post.

      Reply
  • Sam says on September 22, 2010 at 3:24 AM:

    change sh to bash.
    remove -r option
    works fine then

    Reply
  • Zhiqiang Ma says on August 24, 2010 at 9:05 AM:

    Hi Rainer,

    You can find out the lines that have the msg_count and comment them out to bypass these warnings (there are only several lines). It seems the bash on your computer doesn’t support the ((msg_count+=1)) operation.

    Nice to know that you find the script useful ;)

    Reply
  • Rainer says on August 24, 2010 at 8:56 AM:

    aaah, thanks for the quick reply!

    i managed to find the -S option and took it out. had to also remove -r and now i’m happily sending mails, thanks!

    :)

    still have ugly output, though, something is wrong around the msg_count variable:

    Counting objects: 5, done.
    Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
    Total 3 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0)
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    cat: /tmp/git-email-subject-10682: No such file or directory
    …
    but things work! thanks!

    Reply
  • Zhiqiang Ma says on August 24, 2010 at 8:47 AM:

    @Rainer

    It seems that you are using a distribution with old (not too old) software. In RHEL/CentOS 5, the mailx version are very old and it doesn’t support -S option. You can try to put these parameters into the ~/.mailrc file.

    Reply
  • Rainer says on August 24, 2010 at 8:42 AM:

    Hi, cool script thanks!

    Doesn’t work for me though, failing with the following issue:

    git stuff
    ……
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    hooks/post-receive: 706: msg_count+=1: not found
    [: 706: ==: unexpected operator
    cat: /tmp/git-email-subject-10489: No such file or directory
    mailx: invalid option -- 'S'
    usage: mailx [-eIinv] [-a header] [-b bcc-addr] [-c cc-addr] [-s subject] to-addr …
    [-- sendmail-options ...]
    mailx [-eIiNnv] -f [name]
    mailx [-eIiNnv] [-u user]

    I hate bash, can’t read it, sorry. otherwise i’d go hunting for this bug myself!

    Reply
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