[Gforge-devel] Cron for removing MAG

[Francisco Gimeno]

Hello

as you should know, one of the proposed items for 4.6 is to remove the MAG for 
controlling SVN repository access.

Tim has proposed using some cron scripts to replace MAG.

Instead MAG, the svn_authz module will be used... This apache2 module is 
already compiled and maintained for all the distributions as part of the 
Subversion official project.

MAG vs SVN_AUTHZ  
- MAG checks real-time data, so you don't have to wait to apply the new ACLs 
or permissions.
- MAG has to be compiled if not done at gforge.org. I have tried to build the 
packages for the main distributions, but this is a huge work.
- MAG could be difficult to install
- SVN_AUTHZ could be installed as a dependency on the svn_authz module + 
installation of a new cron file.

How does MAG work ?
- MAG is an Apache2 Module, that get it's configuration about database access 
through VirtualHost configuration at "httpd.conf". All the data is obtained 
from database ( users and ACLs ).
How does SVN_AUTHZ work ?
- SVN_AUTHZ is another Apache2 Module. It has configuration in the VirtualHost 
( just to activate it ). Then, each accessed repository has a plain text-file  
with the users and files that could be accessed.

It seems that SVN_AUTHZ has three interactions with the system ( apache2 
config + files spreaded in the filesystem + cron script ), meanwhile MAG has 
just one ( apache2 config ). Each interaction adds complexity to the system.

But finally, the best option seems to be SVN_AUTHZ, because the interactions 
for SVN_AUTHZ are:
- Well tested ( cron scripts )
- Easy ( generate simple text files )
and compiling MAG could be a big deal.

So I'll be working on this during the week.. I think I'll reuse the existing 
work for CVS as it's quite similar.

BR,
Francisco Gimeno
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