Re: [Feature] partial read-only access to CVS repository

[Mark D. Baushke]

Dieter Maurer <dieter@handshake.de> writes:

> Dear CVS community,
> 
> we would like to use CVS as a tool to manage distributed
> development including external partners.
> These partners need read-only access to a large part of the repository
> but write access only to a small part of the repository.
> 
> While "pserver" provides a flexible way to specify read-only
> access to a complete repository, there is no concept of
> "read-only" access to parts of the repository with "write" access
> to a different part.
> 
> 
> I plan to implement such a concept for CVS by combining two
> already existing CVS features, the hierarchical configuration
> used by e.g. "loginfo" and the "access list" of the underlying RCS.
> More precisely, I plan to
> 
>   *  introduce a new administrative file "writeaccess".
> 
>      It has a format similar to "loginfo", i.e. a sequence
>      of lines consisting of a directory pattern and
>      an (optionally empty) user list.
> 
>      The user list is interpreted as follows:
> 
>       - an empty list is equivalent to all users (without restriction)
>         This is the same interpretation as for the "access list"
>       in RCS
> 
>       - a space separated list of user names
> 
>         A user must be in this list to perform any modifying
>       operation on a RCS file in the matched directory
> 
>      Directory matching is done in the same way as for "loginfo",
>      i.e. the first matching line is effective.
> 
>   *  change modifying cvs commands to determine for the
>      affected directory (same way as for "loginfo")
>      the corresponding list of users and check whether the
>      current user is in this list. An empty list is
>      interpreted as "no restriction".
>      An error is returned when the user is not in the list.
> 
> 
> If you are interested, I will provide the modifications for
> inclusion in the CVS core.
> 
> 
> Comments? Improvements? Advice?

It is already possible to do what you want with no changes to cvs
sources.

You may wish to checkout the contrib/cvs_acls (or contrib/cvs_acls.in)
file as a more reasonable alternative. In typical use, you would
run this script as a part of your commitinfo trigger.

        Enjoy!
        -- Mark