Re: Read only file

[Greg A. Woods]

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[ On Tuesday, October 8, 2002 at 09:03:23 (-0700), dd hh wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Read only file
>
> Thanks a lot for the help :-) . But I am not able to understand why
> read only directory is required in CVS. Why can't we have directories
> which has both read and write permission and in that directories files
> with read only permission and some writable files too? Coz in normal
> unix this works perfectly fine.  Could anyone explain it ?

RCS modifies files by creating a temporary file in the same directory as
the repository file, and then copying and editing the data from the
existing file, and finally renaming it.

This means that anyone with commit rights must have write permission in
the repository directory.  Since anyone with write permission in a
directory can rename any file in that directory it is therefore
impossible to try to give only read rights to any of the files in a
directory where the user also has read/write rights.

This _is_ normal unix permissions behaviour.

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

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