HOW IT WORKS

When a developer attempts to connect to a repository via ssh, the SSH daemon

searches for a match for that user's key in ~hg/.ssh/authorized_keys. If the

developer is authorised to connect to the repository they will have an entry

in this file. The entry includes a "command" prefix which specifies that the

restricted shell "/usr/local/lib/mercurial-server/hg-ssh" should be used; this

shell is passed an argument identifying the developer. The shell parses the

command the developer is trying to execute, and consults a rules file to see

if that developer is allowed to perform that action on that repository.

The file ~hg/.ssh/authorized_keys is generated by "refresh-auth", which

recurses through two directories of files containing SSH keys and generates an

entry in authorized_keys for each one, using the name of the key file as the

identifier for the developer. These keys will live in the "keys" subdirectory

"/etc/mercurial-server" and the "keys" subdirectory of a repository called

"hgadmin". A hook in this repository re-runs "refresh-auth" on the most recent

version after every push.

Finally, hook in an extension is run for each changeset that is remotely

committed, which uses the rules file to determine whether to allow the

changeset.