Version Control with Subversion

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

svnserve; A Custom Server

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115

# authenticated users can both read and write

auth-access = write

Notice that svnserve only understands blanket access control. A user either has uni-

versal read/write access, universal read access, or no access. There is no detailed con-

trol over access to specific paths within the repository. For many projects and sites,

this level of access control is more than adequate. However, if you need per-direc-

tory access control, you’ll need to use Apache instead of

svnserve as your server pro-

cess.

SSH Authentication and Authorization

svnserve’s built-in authentication can be very handy, because it avoids the need to

create real system accounts. On the other hand, some administrators already have

well-established SSH authentication frameworks in place. In these situations, all of

the project’s users already have system accounts and the ability to SSH into the

server machine.

It’s easy to use SSH in conjunction with

svnserve. The client simply uses the

svn+ssh:// URL schema to connect:

$ whoami

harry

$ svn list svn+ssh://host.example.com/repos/project

[e-mail]'s password: *****

foo

bar

baz

...

What’s happening here is that the Subversion client is invoking a local ssh process,

connecting to

host.example.com, authenticating as user harry, then spawning