Re: cvs commit/up's change file ownership in working dir.

[Steve deRosier]

> Scenario: N system admins. they checkout a machine's configuration into
> their private working directory. they all are not currently root (or I'll
> shoot them) and so the files are all owned by them with whatever default
> mode per standard (umask etc) procedure. They do their edits, check them
> into the repository. Now when a process on the host goes to the respository
> to fetch it's new/updated configuration files the perms of these Read-only
> checked out files had BETTER have the right perms on them or the processes
> that read them will fall over and die.

AFIK, CVS really doesn't support this type of operation, and in fact it 
would probably break normal usage.  Perhaps some other versioning tool 
does, or you can use the various checkin hooks to modify the behavior.

If I was faced with this situation, I'd consider it a "build" issue. 
I'd have a make file in with these files, and my process (I'm assuming 
you've got some process that would be similar to a script running from 
cron?) would run a script that would do a checkout (as whatever user is 
aproprate, maybe give it a "valid" user with a home directory) or 
export, then run  make on the Makefile.  The Makefile would have 
whatever commands in it that are necessary to install the files:

.SUFFIXES: *.cf *.conf

.cf:
        chown whoever $<
        chgrp wheel $<
        chmod 600 $<
        mv $< /etc/.

.conf:
        chown whoever $<
        chgrp wheel $<
        chmod 600 $<
        mv $< /etc/.

This is only an example, write your own (not 100% if my syntax is 
correct even; security issues may be in above; check your permisions; 
etc...).

That's just how I'd do it if I was faced with the problem, but YMMV.

- Steve