svnserve not strictly required?
- by Kev
I was reading the Red Bean book and noticed this paragraph:
Do not be seduced by the simple idea
of having all of your users access a
repository directly via file:// URLs.
Even if the repository is readily
available to everyone via a network
share, this is a bad idea. It removes
any layers of protection between the
users and the repository: users can
accidentally (or intentionally)
corrupt the repository database, it
becomes hard to take the repository
offline for inspection or upgrade, and
it can lead to a mess of file
permission problems (see the section
called “Supporting Multiple Repository
Access Methods”). Note that this is
also one of the reasons we warn
against accessing repositories via
svn+ssh:// URLs—from a security
standpoint, it's effectively the same
as local users accessing via file://,
and it can entail all the same
problems if the administrator isn't
careful.
I realized that, since I'm the only one accessing the repository, ever, none of these caveats seem to apply. Can I safely down svnserve then and only ever have to worry about upgrading my TortoiseSVN client, not both the client and the server whenever there's a new version out?
(I've tried it already--just needed to use the Relocate feature to switch from svn:// to file://--but I wanted to make sure something wouldn't be sneaking up on me if I left it this way.)
