Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Linus

[Miles Bader]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 01:49:03AM -0400, Colin Walters wrote:
> How do you want me to prove my thesis?  The total lack of nontrivial
> sites using multiple writers to an archive could be construed as a
> fairly strong argument in my favor, for one thing.  On the other hand
> you may just interpret it as arch not being popular enough yet.

Or interpret it as being a sign that people prefer arch's distributed model.
[My money's on this one actually]

> You on the other hand could support your thesis and simultaneously cast
> doubt on mine by say getting an affirmation from the savannah and
> sourceforge teams that creating a new account per project or hacking ssh
> subsystems wouldn't be a problem.

I must admit I'm confused as to exactly what you _do_ think is acceptable on
a large system.  Presumably since you (elsewhere) advocate using file-system
permissions, you think it's OK to have a system-user per archive-committer,
right?  Is the number of projects so much larger than the number of
committers that creating a user-per-project actually presents a problem?
What about adding groups to support access control?

Since you're pushing for the copy-permissions hack, what does that solve?
It (1) avoids the need to set the umask specially on login, and (2) allows
different branches(&c) to use different permission bits.

(2) Is only useful if you have some access-control problem that can't be
    solved by changing a file's group-id, which seems true only if you need
    to enforce certain types of access control, but which as far as I can
    see is _not_ needed to enforce the typical sort of control needed on
    e.g. savannah.

(1) Is useful even for cases where you use a single global file permission
    (perhaps with multiple gids), because it avoids any problems with setting
    the umask in the sftp server/local user's environment.  Is the only
    issue then?

-miles
-- 
`Cars give people wonderful freedom and increase their opportunities.
 But they also destroy the environment, to an extent so drastic that
 they kill all social life' (from _A Pattern Language_)