University of Windsor gets Subversion

I was starting another assignment/project for one of my classes at the University, and found myself wishing that I had a Subversion repository available on the computer science server, luna.

So I made a little post on the Ataraxis forums asking for the Subversion tools to be made available on Luna.

After a few “hell yeahs” from the usual suspects, Sysadmin markg pointed out that..

All system requests must be submitted in triplicate (complete with the new cover sheet) to the fridge in 3105. It should of course be stapled to a six-pack. The better the beer the faster the response…

Twenty-four hours after beer¹, subversion was installed and being tested. Less than forty-eight hours after beer, the official documentation for Requesting a Subversion Repository at the University of Windsor was published.

Update. After exchanging a few emails with Mark, I have a repos tree abusing the Apache SVNParentPath directive, effectively letting me create as many subversion repositories as I want, with no need to further bother our gracious sysadmins. Looks a little something like

<Location /~castonga/svn>
DAV svn
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Subversion repository"
AuthUserFile /global/stu1/castonga/svn-auth-file
###
SVNParentPath /global/stu1/castonga/repos

<LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
Require valid-user
</LimitExcept>

</Location>

Create a repos tree with group ownership permitting writes by the Apache process, and using SGID to ensure repositories created within have are likewise writable.

mkdir /global/stu1/castonga/repos
chown -R castonga:www /global/stu1/castonga/repos
chmod u+rwx g+rwxs /global/stu1/castonga/repos

The svnadmin create repo-name command seems to create repositories using a template rather than mkdir calls, so they don’t inherit the group sgid sticky bit & permissions. Instead of changing them all by hand every time I want to create a new repository, or bothering an admin to chown -R the mess, I created a tarball of the repo with proper permissions.

Ah, it’s good to be a geek.

1. I guess our sysadmins like Heineken. ↩