Re: Versioning from another perspective

Bill Bumgarner (bbum@codefab.com)
Mon, 20 Dec 1999 18:11:26 -0500 

Message-Id: <199912202311.SAA12764@bjork.codefab.com>
To: "Ben Laurie" <ben@algroup.co.uk>
Cc: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1999 18:11:26 -0500
From: Bill Bumgarner <bbum@codefab.com>
Subject: Re: Versioning from another perspective

You are correct-- a lot of my criticisms regarding CVS are certainly centered  
around the need for a tool that is much more adept at handling relatively deep  
source trees in a very process-centric environment.  And a lot of the criticism  
is quite directly sourced from the conclusion that CVS's current  
implementation is not of the quality that i would be at all comfortable with  
using it as the basis for such a solution.

I have a situation that calls for a particularly good hammer... cvs is a  
somewhat satisfactory shovel and, unfortunately, it cannot elegantly be turned  
into a good hammer.   WebDAV-- the versioning work, in particular-- provides  
the basis for what looks to be a really excellent hammer.

We use a similar solution to what you described to provide secure access-- and  
it works in a satisfactory manner.   What we don't like is that:

- it is inelegant. :-)

- it requires maintenance of yet-another-login on the cvs server machine.

- it ain't HTTP;  as stupid as that sounds, simply running on top of HTTP buys  
a lot of ease-of-integration and flexibility because basically *everyone*  
(including really dumb admins) understands it.  Heck, a lot of people believe  
that HTTP is *the* standard Internet protocol.

- can't provide different clients with restricted access to sub-trees within  
the repository.

b.bum


From: Ben Laurie <ben@algroup.co.uk>
Date: 1999-12-20 23:00:56 +0000
To: bbum@codefab.com
Subject: Re: Versioning from another perspective
CC: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (WinNT; I)
Organization: A.L. Group plc

Bill Bumgarner wrote:
>
> [This is off topic, but bears some relevance in that it addresses specific
> problems with the use of CVS that I would like to solve in a clean manner with 
> a WebDAV based solution]

Whilst I agree with pretty much everything you say, I do feel you are
making something of a "my shovel doesn't make a particularly good
hammer" kind of complaint. However, I would dearly love to see something
that does address all these problems, so more power to your elbow. One
thing I must take issue with, though:

> - The CVS client/server support is ugly;   pserver is grossly insecure in that 
> it uses base64 encoded passwords to avoid sending data in clear text... but
> rsh/ssh requires the user to have a full blown login account on the server
> machine.

Not at all - we use restricted shells for CVS access. And
chroot+restricted shell for anonymous. I consider ssh+rbash to be a high
quality and secure client/server solution. If somewhat inelegant.

Cheers,

Ben.

--
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