[Gnu-arch-users] Re: WebDAV

[Eric S. Johansson]

A.J. Rossini wrote:
> "Eric S. Johansson" <address@hidden> writes:
>
>
> > [topic drift] if someone with knowledge about webdav could share how to 
> > configure Apache and place it in the wiki, it would be much appreciated.
>
>
> You know, if I could've easily set up WebDAV, I would have never found
> arch (on Apache 2.x, it was the straw that broke my back wrt
> subversion).
>
> Of course, at this point, I'm not going back.  

:-) maybe we need something easier than webdav and sftp in order to 
provide access?  Monotone (another interesting system) uses a CGI based 
mechanism as well as SMTP based mechanisms for propagating changes.

before people get their dander up, sftp is only really good for 
providing access to people you trust.  There may be ways of creating a 
chrooted environment but usually, most security systems are not built 
with humans in mind.  They are usually way to complicated, error prone, 
and stoic.

webdav seems to have a similar complexity reputation.  Not surprising 
since it was promulgated by Microsoft.  Maybe with a simple recipe, we 
can fix the startup hurdles.

Which brings me to the last option, "something new".  If, there is a 
relatively simple definition for the transactions between arch the 
client and arch the repository, it should be possible to build some 
CGI's to handle the data transfer and permissions.  I have some tools 
that I built as part of camram which do authentication and session 
cookies in a known secure fashion.  It simple, they can be independent 
of the system authentication if you wish, and it works.

I volunteer to build the CGI if that is what people want and it can be 
kept simple.  ;-)

the end goal is keeping the arch server simple enough that the start up 
hurdle is not a problem and the system is easy to manage.

---eric