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Re: Customizing default svnserve.conf file?

From: Philippe Auphelle <pauphelle_at_wanadoo.fr>
Date: 2005-02-18 09:55:56 CET

Ben,

Thanks for your help.

> Subversion was designed with the assumption that creating a new
> repository is a Big Deal:

Shoot, that's just what I feared :-(
Doesn't work too well in our context, where
- developers are born equal (yet not all with a "server manager" state
of mind),
- quite a few projects are small and unrelated, and
- a few others are big with about everyone involved.

In that context, we'd rather have repository creation made possible from
the user side with just the right (most restrictive) defaults, e.g. in
our case: read/write rights to the repository creator but no one else.
That would make the safe side implicit, rather than have to rely on the
creator to log onto the svn machine, create the repository, and remember
about properly tweaking the svnserver.conf file.
Whoever feels like an "svn admin" would then only have to check the svn
tree once in a while for check up, clean up and maintenance.
In our case, developers currently hardly ever log to the scm machine.
They don't even really need their own ssh account there, just an scm
access through the scm tools.

Anyway, since that's not the way svn works, and since we are still in
the study phase, I guess we'll have to either do with it or stick with CVS.

> Maybe a better idea is: make one big repository. Users can start new
> projects by creating new directories in the repository.

We considered that, but from what I know of svn (please correct me if
I'm wrong), we are worried by at least three aspects:

1) It goes against the rule of thumb (FAQ) that says "If the projects
are related, and are likely to share data, then it's best to create one
repository with several subdirectory". Here, lotsa projects are small
unrelated.
2) Any straight repository checkout will bring the whole repository
while just a specific project (subdir) is actually needed
3) Separate repositories insures against inadvertent alteration of the
tree for project A by someone working on unrelated project B.

Hmmmm...

Ben Collins-Sussman wrote:
>
> On Feb 17, 2005, at 10:59 AM, Philippe Auphelle wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm quite new to svn, but I did RTFM and FAQ. And I still have a
>> couple of questions (to begin with :) )
>>
>> Is there a way to customize the svnserve.conf file that gets created at
>> "svnadmin create" time?
>> The default one gives read access to anonymous users, something that
>> gets us a bit nervous...
>>
>> And while we're in that area, is there a way to config svn / svnserve so
>> that SVN users can create a new repository through svnserve / MD5, i.e.
>> without having to account-log onto the svn machine (or call an admin
>> to do it)?
>>
>
> Subversion was designed with the assumption that creating a new
> repository is a Big Deal: that it doesn't happen very often, and that
> when it does happen, it's something done entirely by a server
> administrator. It's assumed that the admin will then take the time to
> configure the new repository carefully and correctly -- by tweaking
> svnserve.conf, tweaking httpd.conf, setting up access permissions, and
> so on.
>
> So no, repositories weren't meant to be tiny lightweight things that can
> easily pop into existence whenever a user hits a button. You could
> certainly write CGI scripts to do such a thing, but it seems a bit
> reckless.
>
> Maybe a better idea is: make one big repository. Users can start new
> projects by creating new directories in the repository.
>
>
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Received on Fri Feb 18 09:58:34 2005

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