[svk-devel] using SVK for configuration file management - permissions, etc. proposal

[Oliver Paulus]

Hello,

I want to use SVK to have my configuration files under /etc on my linux box
versioned (here is a howto:
http://www.enricozini.org/2005/tips/etc-under-svk.html).
I have made some tests and SVK works very good. My problem is that file
permissions, owner user and group will not be saved in the SVN/SVK repository.
There is also a problem with hard links.

So I have made some tests with the python-subversion bindings and a SVN
repository. It is possible to create new custom properties in the SVN
repository for repository entities. My small python prototype reads the SVN FS
and gets a custom property for the files and folders called "cst:chmod" which
is the permission number. Then the program can set the permission on that file.

I think it would be very useful for a lot of people to use SVK for configuration
tracking. SVK should set a custom properties on the filesystem items on
permission, owner, ... change in the SVN repository. The hardlink can be
realised with an extra custom field for the target too.

What do you think about my idea? It would be a perfect solution for
configuration tracking. Another benefit of SVK is that it uses the SVN FS - so
e.g. the Trac program from Edgewall works too on the SVN repository. A benefit
for SVK is that SVK does not have these annoying ".svn" folders in the working
copy.

Regards
Oliver Paulus