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Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 13:10:40 -0700
From: Justin Erenkrantz <jerenkrantz@apache.org>
To: dev@apr.apache.org
Subject: Portable file permissions
Message-ID: <20020821201040.GW14713@apache.org>
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	dev@apr.apache.org
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Over on dev@svn, I've brought up the desire to have Subversion
be able to handle permissions on a file that are in the repository.
I want to set a property on a file that indicates I want it to be
user-readable and user-writable but nothing else (i.e. 600 octet
permission).  The key here would be no matter what platform your
client is on, the 'right' thing would happen when you check-out the
file.  So, we come here now as we need to add missing pieces to APR.

The key problem here is that APR has no *portable* permissions
structure.  apr_file_perms_set() is a no-op on Win32 and Branko
says it will always be a no-op because the API is wrong.

So, given a desire to have a mapping that works for the Unix-style
u-g-o (for true Unix ACLs are uncommon), what type of API or
permissions structure could we come up with that works with Win32?
Since I have no knowledge of what the Win32 ACLs can and cannot do,
I'm at a loss.  (If you ask me, the current APR API is just fine!)

Someone pointed out looking at Samba, but I'm fairly certain that
isn't relevant since it uses configurable mappings set by the
admin.  All we want is a unified API that can do "essentially"
the right thing for both permission models.  -- justin