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Using hooks

===========

What is a hook?

---------------

One way to customize Bazaar's behaviour is with *hooks*.  Hooks allow you to

perform actions before or after certain Bazaar operations.  The operations

include ``commit``, ``push``, ``pull``, and ``uncommit``.

For a complete list of hooks and their parameters, see `Hooks

<../user-reference/index.html#hooks>`_ in the User Reference.

Most hooks are run on the client, but a few are run on the server.  (Also

see the `push-and-update plugin`_ that handles one special case of

server-side operations.)

.. _push-and-update plugin: http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/plugins/en/push-and-update-plugin.html

Using hooks

-----------

To use a hook, you should `write a plugin`_.  Instead of

creating a new command, this plugin will define and install the hook.  Here's

an example::

    from bzrlib import branch

    def post_push_hook(push_result):

        print "The new revno is %d" % push_result.new_revno

    branch.Branch.hooks.install_named_hook('post_push', post_push_hook,

                                     'My post_push hook')

.. _write a plugin: http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/plugins/en/plugin-development.html

To use this example, create a file named ``push_hook.py``, and stick it in

``plugins`` subdirectory of your configuration directory.  (If you have never

installed any plugins, you may need to create the ``plugins`` directory).

That's it!  The next time you push, it should show "The new revno is...".

Of course, hooks can be much more elaborate than this, because you have the

full power of Python at your disposal.  Now that you know how to use hooks,

what you do with them is up to you.

The plugin code does two things.  First, it defines a function that will be

run after ``push`` completes.  (It could instead use an instance method or

a callable object.)  All push hooks take a single argument, the

``push_result``.

Second, the plugin installs the hook.  The first argument ``'post_push'``

identifies where to install the hook.  The second argument is the hook

itself.  The third argument is a name ``'My post_push hook'``, which can be

used in progress messages and error messages.

To reduce the start-up time of Bazaar it is also possible to "lazily" install hooks,

using the ``bzrlib.hooks.install_lazy_named_hook`` function. This removes the need

to load the module that contains the hook point just to install the hook. Here's lazy

version of the example above::

    from bzrlib import hooks

    def post_push_hook(push_result):

        print "The new revno is %d" % push_result.new_revno

    hooks.install_lazy_named_hook('bzrlib.branch', 'Branch.hooks',

        'post_push', post_push_hook, 'My post_push hook')

Debugging hooks

---------------

To get a list of installed hooks (and available hook points), use the hidden

``hooks`` command::

    bzr hooks

Example: a merge plugin

-----------------------

Here's a complete plugin that demonstrates the ``Merger.merge_file_content``

hook.  It installs a hook that forces any merge of a file named ``*.xml``

to be a conflict, even if Bazaar thinks it can merge it cleanly.

``merge_xml.py``::

  """Custom 'merge' logic for *.xml files.

  Always conflicts if both branches have changed the file.

  """

  from bzrlib.merge import PerFileMerger, Merger

  def merge_xml_files_hook(merger):

      """Hook to merge *.xml files"""

      return AlwaysConflictXMLMerger(merger)

  class AlwaysConflictXMLMerger(PerFileMerger):

      def file_matches(self, params):

          filename = self.get_filename(params, self.merger.this_tree)

          return filename.endswith('.xml')

      def merge_matching(self, params):

          return 'conflicted', params.this_lines

  Merger.hooks.install_named_hook(

      'merge_file_content', merge_xml_files_hook, '*.xml file merge')

``merge_file_content`` hooks are executed for each file to be merged.  For

a more a complex example look at the ``news_merge`` plugin that's bundled with

Bazaar in the ``bzrlib/plugins`` directory.