[CentOS] SubVersion on CentOS 4.2

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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