<p>We've got VisualSVN Server set up as our Subversion server on Windows, and we use Ankhsvn + TortoiseSVN as clients on our workstations.</p>

<p>How can you configure the server to require commit messages to be non-empty?</p>

VisualSVN Server 3.9 provides the
```
VisualSVNServerHooks.exe check-logmessage
```
pre-commit hook that helps you reject commits with empty or short log messages. See the article
KB140: Validating commit log messages in VisualSVN Server
for instructions.
Besides the built-in
```
VisualSVNServerHooks.exe
```
, VisualSVN Server and SVN in general uses a
number of hooks
to accomplish tasks like this.
```
start-commit
```
— run before commit transaction begins, can be used to do special permission checking
```
pre-commit
```
— run at the end of the transaction, but before commit. Often used to validate things such as a non zero length log message.
```
post-commit
```
— runs after the transaction has been committed. Can be used for sending emails, or backing up repository.
```
pre-revprop-change
```
— runs before a revision property change. Can be used to check permissions.
```
post-revprop-change
```
— runs after a revision property change. Can be used to email or backup these changes.
You need to use the
```
pre-commit
```
hook. You can write it yourself in just about any language your platform supports, but there are a number of scripts on the web. Googling "svn precommit hook to require comment" I found a couple that looked like they would fit the bill:
Perl Script
Python Script