[Restored CC of the mailing list]

On Thursday, October 17, 2013 03:24:45 PM Mark Phippard wrote:


On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 3:00 PM, Alexey Neyman <sti...@att.net[1]> wrote:


 
We are actively using authz path-based authentication rules: due to some 
legalrequirements, some parts of our product source code are not accessible to 
apart of the developer team. Currently authz does not support wildcards 
(thereis 
an issue about that [1] discussed since 2006). Because of this, each time 
abranch is 
created, authz rules have to be copied and modified for the newbranch.

This leads to a proliferation of authz rules; our authz is currently about2000 
lines 
and growing. I am currently implementing a post-commit script sothat we would 
be 
able to record authz rules on files/directories, and authzwould be appended 
with 
new rules every time these files/directories arecopied.




CollabNet TeamForge supports wildcard rules:


http://blogs.collab.net/teamforge/wildcard-access-control-and-path-based-permissions-in-teamforge[2]


Interesting. How did they deal with the concern raised in issue #2662 (i.e., 
the need 
to walk the tree below a certain path to check if any of the other rules apply 
to any 
descendant path)?



First, I am wondering how well such 'authz' approach would scale. Has anyonerun 
scalability tests on authz?




So your question is whether at a certain size does it slow down?  I recall in 
the past 
it being said that it was stored in a hash so performance should not vary.  But 
there 
has to be a parsing slow down and possible memory bloat.  That said, I have 
heard of 
files in the hundred thousands for lines.

Yes, that was the question.

Note that you can also have files per repository.

We do not want to split the repository unless absolutely necessary, as that 
would 
break the atomicity of commits for features touching both restricted and 
unrestricted parts of the repository. Instead, I think, it would be very handy 
if the 
access rights were copied along with the file/directory on which they are 
specified.
 
Second, I thought that if I am using properties to track authz-controlledfiles, 
SVN 
server would probably do that more effectively than a post-commitscript. As an 
added value, property-based authz would allow versioning inpath-based auth 
configuration that current mechanism does not allow. E.g.,currently one could 
either configure path /foo as either R/O, R/W orunaccessible to user U; it is 
not 
possible to configure the path to beunaccessible before/after a certain 
revision.




Someone could always contribute it.  I do not think it would scale well but if 
it were 
optional then you could make the decision for yourself.  Authz rules are 
expensive 
to apply.  If SVN had to do additional repository I/O to check for and fetch 
properties it would only get worse.

I'll probably have a stab at it. One of the goals of this post was to check if 
there are 
any objections to such feature that would make such development worthless /ab 
initio/.

Regards,
Alexey.

--------
[1] mailto:sti...@att.net
[2] 
http://blogs.collab.net/teamforge/wildcard-access-control-and-path-based-permissions-in-teamforge

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