access control features for version control systems

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Martin Pool <mbp at sourcefrog.net> writes:

  > Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
  > > Martin Pool <mbp at sourcefrog.net> writes:
  > >
  > >   > Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
  > >   >
  > >   > > IMHO the default should be that when doing "bzr get" the mtime should
  > >   > > be set to the mtime the files had when doing "bzr commit".
  > >   > > Why? For consistency with "tar" and "cvs".
  > >   >
  > >   > Interesting point -- and that would imply it should be a per-file mtime,
  > >   > not just the time of the changeset.  OK, noted.
  > >
  > > Right, it should be per file.
  > > There's another piece of metadata that IMHO should be per file:
  > > permissions.
  > >
  > > Here's an example why: (I assume that the bzr-0.0.0.69.tgz snapshot was
  > > created using "bzr export"), the "bzr" "setup.py" files are not
  > > executable:
  > >
  > > tar -tzvf bzr-0.0.0.69.tgz bzr-0.0.0.69/bzr
  > > -rw-r--r-- mbp/mbp         919 2005-03-22 04:37:54 bzr-0.0.0.69/bzr
  > 
  > Good point.
  > 
  > I am planning to just version the execute bit, though, not all the
  > permissions.  I think whether something is group-writable or not is more
  > a property of how the checkout will be used than the source.
  > 
  > There are exceptions, such as when managing /etc, but they should
  > perhaps be handled as exceptions.

Well, not only /etc, but  the home directory too. 
For example one would want .emacs to be readable to everybody, but
.bbdb should not be. It would be nice if TRT happened without much
fiddling. 

          --dan