Re: disable cvs commit and/or make repository read-only

[Ted Stern]

On 14 Feb 2006 at 09:35 UTC-0800, Robert Dodier wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am considering converting an existing CVS repository to Subversion.
> After that I'd like to make it impossible to commit stuff to CVS
> to avoid heartbreak, confusion, etc.
>
> What is the standard practice for making a CVS repository read-only?
>
> I've searched this ng for ideas and didn't come up with anything clear
> to me.
> One idea was to modify the file system permissions but wouldn't
> it be better to do it through CVS itself? (Instead of letting CVS try
> to commit stuff and fail.)
>
> Anyway I welcome your comments.
>
> Robert Dodier

In your cvs installation, there is a contrib directory.  Let's assume
it is in some location like /usr/share/cvs/contrib/.  In that
directory, there is a file named cvs_acls.  Read it.  You will end up
doing something like this:

         cvs -d <cvsrootpath> checkout CVSROOT
         cd CVSROOT

Edit commitinfo to add something like the following line:

     DEFAULT         /usr/share/cvs/contrib/cvs_acls

(change path to where CVS contrib files are installed on your system.)

Edit checkoutlist, add the following line:

     avail Access Control List can't be checked out

Create an 'avail' file.  I like to add the comments from the top of
cvs_acls as a header.  Add the following two lines below the header:

     # By default, the whole repository is unavailable to everyone.
     unavail

If you want, you might want to give yourself write permissions by
adding two more lines:

     # ... except give permissions to the administrator
     avail|YourLoginID

Then add the 'avail' file to CVSROOT and commit your changes

         cvs add avail
         cvs commit

Ted
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