doc/file-conditions
author Paul Crowley <paul@lshift.net>
Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:09:00 +0100
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FILE CONDITIONS
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Read configuring-access before you read this.
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mercurial-server supports file and branch conditions, which restrict an
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operation depending on what files it modifies and what branch the work is
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on. However, the way these conditions work is subtle and can be
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counterintuitive - if you want to keep things simple, stick to user and
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repo conditions, and then things are likely to work the way you would
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expect.
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File and branch conditions are added to the conditions against which a rule
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matches, just like user and repo conditions; they have this form:
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    file=<globpattern> - file in the repo
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    branch=<globpattern> - name of the branch
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However, in order to understand what effect adding these conditions will
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have, it helps to understand how and when these rules are applied.
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The rules file is used to make four decisions:
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- Whether to allow a repository to be created
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- Whether to allow access to a repository
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- Whether to allow a changeset on a particular branch at all
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- Whether to allow a changeset to change a particular file
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When the first two of these decisions are being made, nothing is known
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about what files might be changed, and so all file conditions automatically
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succeed for the purpose of such decisions. This means that doing tricky
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things with file conditions can have counterintuitive consequences:
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- You cannot limit read access to a subset of a repository with a "read"
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rule and a file condition: any user who has access to a repository can read
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all of it and its full history. Such a rule can only have the effect of
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masking a later "write" rule, as in this example:
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   read repo=specialrepo file=dontwritethis
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   write repo=specialrepo
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allows all users to read specialrepo, and to write to all files *except*
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that any changeset which writes to "dontwritethis" will be rejected.
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- For similar reasons, don't give "init" rules file conditions.
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- Don't try to deny write access to a particular file on a particular
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branch - a developer can write to the file on another branch and then merge
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it in. Either deny all writes to the branch from that user, or allow them
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to write to all the files they can write to on any branch. In other words,
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something like this will have the intended effect:
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  write user=docs/* branch=docs file=docs/*
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But something like this will not have the intended effect; it will
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effectively allow these users to write to any file on any branch, by
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writing it to "docs" first:
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  write user=docs/* branch=docs
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  write user=docs/* file=docs/*
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  read user=docs/*
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