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From: Phil Crooker <Phil.Crooker@orix.com.au>
To: Stefan Sperling <stsp@elego.de>
CC: "users@subversion.apache.org" <users@subversion.apache.org>
Subject: RE: view log problem with path authorization
Thread-Topic: view log problem with path authorization
Thread-Index: AQHRtZapj9wvO8m6JUqoNtFV2LcfNp/QsVoAgACt0nM=
Date: Mon, 30 May 2016 11:24:32 +0000
Message-ID: <1464607472381.16792@orix.com.au>
References: <1464079229507.65221@orix.com.au>,<20160530105740.GH832@ted.stsp.name>
In-Reply-To: <20160530105740.GH832@ted.stsp.name>
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archived-at: Mon, 30 May 2016 11:24:50 -0000

Thanks, Stefan, for the explanation. It has been very puzzling, this makes =
sense now. A feature, not a bug.  ;-)


________________________________________
From: Stefan Sperling <stsp@elego.de>
Sent: Monday, 30 May 2016 8:27 PM
To: Phil Crooker
Cc: users@subversion.apache.org
Subject: Re: view log problem with path authorization

On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 08:40:29AM +0000, Phil Crooker wrote:
> Newbie question - I have authenticated users with read or r/w access are =
unable to view logs, eg:
>
>
>     # svn --username whatever --password xxxxx svn://svn/repos/project/ya=
da.txt
>
>     svn: Item is not readable
>
> I must grant anonymous read access in authz and then it works:
>
>
>     [/]
>
>         * =3D r
>
>
> I've seen this reported earlier but no answer:
>
>
>     http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2011-02/0141.shtml
>
>     http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6651997/svn-show-log-not-working
>
>
> My question is why can't an authenticated user who has rights see the log=
s?

Hi Phil,

The use case scenario behind the design of the authz feature is the followi=
ng:

Imagine you're setting up a competition, where teams apply to compete
and write some piece of software for you based on a specification.
Your competition has the following contraints:
 - No team should be aware of who else is competing.
 - You're hosting all competing teams in a single repository.

In this scenario, the following information must be protected:
 - file content
 - the knowledge of which paths exist in the repository
 - the knowledge of which authors make commits to the repository

'svn log' shows always the author name, and the list of changed paths
is available with 'svn log -v'. And because log messages are free-form,
they may contain content which would leak such information.
For example, developers might refer to each other in log messages
("Review by: Robert") or they might refer to paths in the repository
("team1/project1/main.c: Fix crash with --help option.")

That's why, if any path in the changed paths list of a revision is
forbidden to the authenticated user, the *entire* information which
would be provided by 'svn log' is hidden from that user.

I suspect that, in your scenario, SVN denies access to the revision
log based on the above reasoning.
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