David Anderson <david.anderson@calixo.net> writes:
> Darix just brought up an interesting point about the way authz works
> in mod_authz_svn and svnserve.
>
> In mod_authz_svn, repositories can only be served at a depth of zero
> or one directories (respectively SVNPath and SVNParentPath). So in
> authz configurations you only get two cases:
>
> [/path/in/repos]
> ...
>
> and
>
> [repos_name:/path/in/repos]
> ...
>
> Now, we have authz in svnserve. In svnserve, a repository can be
> served at any depth, so you could also get:
>
> [repos_path/repos_name:/path/in/repos]
> ...
>
> However, the current code in svnserve takes only the last component of
> the path to make the repository name. Thus, a setup which serves
> /groupa/repos and /groupb/repos would have overlapping authz rules for
> both repositories, if both repository configurations point to the same
> authz configuration.
>
> Okay, I'm not being very clear here. [...]
No, actually, you were being very clear!
> Say you have two repositories:
> /srv/svn/groupa/repos and /srv/svn/groupb/repos. Both are served by
> svnserve -r /srv/svn, and in both repositories, svnserve.conf lists
> "authz-db = /srv/svn/authz.conf". For both repositories, svnserve
> thinks that both are called 'repos', and thus, no possibility to
> discern between them in the authz rules.
>
> This case seems fairly rare in actual fact. Big hosts like BerliOS
> have unique project names, and just partition them into different
> directories for efficiency. However, there are cases where this could
> lead to serious confusion.
>
> I'm not really sure how to handle this gracefully. There are two
> options as I see it:
> 1. Document the limits of authz as applied to svnserve, and hope
> that the collision situation is rare enough to not bother anyone.
>
> 2. Make mod_dav_svn and mod_authz_svn handle n-depth repositories
> when serving SVNParentPath, and make svnserve handle n-depth authz
> like it should. This makes svnserve and mod_dav_svn serve
> repositories equally, and enables both having the same authz rules and
> general setup if the repositories have to be served from both RA
> methods.
>
> My view is that 2. is the right thing to do, because it makes authz
> equal and uniform accross RA methods. It seems that mod_dav_svn was
> made to prevent n-depth repositories by design though. Can someone in
> the know tell me why that is? This fix would also require altering
> dav_svn_split_uri(), which likely has a lot of repercussions all over
> mod_dav_svn.
>
> Also, 2. will take more time than amending the svnbook as
> 1. requires. Is there enough time to get this fix (if it is deemed
> necessary and possible) into 1.3.0 ? The alternative, if the fix is
> not possible before 1.3.0, would be to document the lack in svnserve
> for 1.3.0 and work out a durable solution for the next release.
>
> What do people think?
I agree with Max: 1 for now, 2 later. I don't think there's enough
time to get the fix into 1.3.0, especially with all the bindings stuff
going on, and it's clearly not a showstopper for anyone, since there's
a reasonably clean workaround.
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Received on Mon Oct 10 05:26:23 2005