1 HOW IT WORKS

     2 

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

     4 daemon searches for a match for that user's key in

     5 ~hg/.ssh/authorized_keys. If the developer is authorised to connect to the

     6 repository they will have an entry in this file. The entry includes a

     7 "command" prefix which specifies that the restricted shell

     8 "/usr/local/share/mercurial-server/hg-ssh" should be used; this shell is

     9 passed an argument identifying the developer. The shell parses the command

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

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

    12 

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

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

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

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

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

    18 repository called "hgadmin". A hook in this repository re-runs

    19 "refresh-auth" on the most recent version after every push.

    20 

    21 When users try to commit new changesets, a hook is run which consults the

    22 rules file to decide whether to allow the changeset into the repository.

    23 This can depend not only on the user and the repository, but also the

    24 branch and files in the changeset.