I am new to linux based version control systems and am setting up a new project in Rails which will use SubVersion. I set up a repository for this project in a directory called /var/spool/svn and ran svnadmin create etc. I did all this while su'ed to root, however all programming will be done by non-privileged users. To provide for this I created a group called "svn", added the np userids to that secondary group and chgrp'ed the svn repository to have the guid set to "svn". However, attempts to use svn by np userids failed with references to ra_local and BDB access violations.

What I discovered is that the default file modes established by svnadmin create do not give w access to the guid, only to the uuid. I therefore issued a chmod -R g+w * in the /var/spool/svn directory and svn thereafter worked as desired for privileged and non-privileged userids alike.

My questions are three (four):

1. Is this behaviour (limiting access to a central svn depository to a single userid) intentional? (If so then why?)

2. Have I created future problems by loosening svn access to such an extent?

3. Is there a better way to accomplish this?

Regards, Jim

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