[OS X TeX] subversion

[Nathan Dunfield]

Adam R. Maxwell wrote:
>> As I said, I don't use Subversion, but for CVS *running any kind of
>> server* for a small  collaboration like this is *completely
>> unnecessary* and probably a bad idea for amateurs like myself, and
>> I'm pretty sure this is true for Subversion as well.
>
> You can use svn+ssh to access a subversion repo, but svnserve still
> has to be set up correctly; it looks like svn+ssh uses it underneath.

Adam,

Thanks for the additional information.   You're completely correct  
that svnserve is always needed on the machine that hosts the  
depository.   However, when svnserve is used via "svn+ssh", one is  
not actually running a server in the usual sense, i.e. there is no  
daemon constantly running that is monitoring a certain port for  
incoming connections, etc.   So there's less to worry about from a  
security standpoint, beyond that you have to allow other users to log  
in to the host machine via ssh.

> Do NOT make [the depository] world writeable!  Security needs to be  
> taken seriously, especially if you're giving others access to your  
> system.

As long as all users on the system are intended to be allowed to  
access the repository, I don't see that there's much of a difference  
between having it be world-writable and the correct solution of  
creating a group to which all of the users belong.  (Personally, I do  
the latter, but it's certain much more complicated than the former.)

For better or worse, OS X defaults to a ton of world-writeable  
directories and files.  Perhaps my machine is misconfigured, but on  
it both "/" and "/Applications" are world-writable directories, and  
some applications themselves are world writable by default (e.g. the  
Excalibur that comes with TeXLive).   Do e.g.

find "/" -xdev -perm +o=w ! \( -type d -perm +o=t \) ! -type l -print

to see the many such files.
	
	Best,

	Nathan





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