One thing we were really missing in
Gitorious is lack of diff in email notifications. We were using this feature in SVN for “quick code review”. Before we moved to Gitorious, we were using Gitolite where it was possible to configure it with git .hooks. However in Gitorious you do not have easy access to your repository directory ( it’s hashed ). So I have started googling about the feature. I have found in Gitorious a misterious feature called webhooks. But what it does is sending HTTP requests with JSON objects about commits, but without diff body. After loosing few more hours on google, forums and different groups I decided to try to implement this feature on my own. Few more hours to understand this mysterious ( for me ) Ruby on Rails code of Gitorious and I have localized few files that I should change to make it working. After all I have to say it was quite simple. The core are two lines that create commit diff in lib/event_rendering/text.rb: repo = Repository.find_by_name_in_project!(event.target.name, event.project) diff_content = repo.git.git.show({}, [start_sha, end_sha].join(“..”)) (If you would like to modify content of the commit diff you just have to modify this git.git call ). Rest of the code is just for putting diff_content value into email :). You can review the whole patch here. After applying the patch please remember to restart git-poller and subscribe in Gitorious to email notification.