Forum: open-discussion

Reason for not supporting SVN over https? [ Reply ]
By: Henrik Bengtsson on 2010-04-13 11:01

This is a continuation on R-devel thread 'Re: Possible improvements/clarifications for R-forge' (March 2010):

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Stefan Theussl <stefan.theussl@wu.ac.at> wrote:
[snip]
> On 28.03.2010 18:34, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
[snip]
>> 5. No https access - only svn+ssh access with private/public keys
>>
>> The svn+ssh protocol for SVN commits is a show stopper for people who
>> never used SVN or ssh authentication keys before. It is easy for
>> someone who knows how it should work, but quite hard to troubleshoot
>> if you don't know what to expect. It is hard to help someone get
>> started without being next to them on their computer. This makes it
>> hard to convince people who "don't really" care to start using SVN and
>> r-forge (which would improve overall quality in the long run).
>> Supporting SVN commits over https would lower this threshold.
[snip]
> As far as R-Forge is concerned, developers don't need to know how SSH works.
> Only the SVN client needs to be aware of it. One can always use passwords,
> private/public key authentication is not necessary here. Entering passwords
> multiple times is the only drawback of the keyless approach. I think
> question 5 is answered.

Is there a particular reason for not supporting SVN over https, e.g. a security reason? ...or is it rather lack of resources/time for setting it up and maintaining it?

Cheers,

Henrik

PS. The reason why I ask is because it really helps making decisions if one knows the purpose/plans of others. It helps to know if you have it on your wish/todo list, or will-not-happen list.