Nicolas Pouillard wrote:
> You can use a custom restricted shell for these users. You could only
> allow to call "darcs apply".

Taking something inherently insecure and patching it up in
under-documented (on the Darcs side) ways is not a sound way of
producing something secure. It would be prone to security-breaking
mistakes and fragility with respect to changes in future Darcs
versions. Also, I'd guess the set of operations needed is more than
just "darcs apply"; perhaps scp to upload and download files, for
example, and then how do you make sure that the file-changes comply
with what Darcs needs?

> [Grant wrote:]
>> 5. Email (to accompany HTTP/HTTPS): Requires manual effort for patch
>> application or can't return sensible error messages (if it can, then
>> it can probably also serve as a spamming host).
>
> Manual efforts can be automated :)

To expand on my spamming host point; if patches are to be applied in
an automated fashion, error messages need to reach the appropriate
person, which means that the server will be able to email people. That
would open it up to abuse as a spamming host, through sending it
intentionally broken patches (or just fairly arbitrary emails) with a
forged sender.

I am perhaps too paranoid in these matters, but I would think that
paid sysadmins in general would be reluctant to expose Darcs these
ways, for the same reasons.

G.
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