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<p>This text is a work in progress—highly subject to
change—and may not accurately describe any released
version of the Apache™ Subversion® software.
Bookmarking or otherwise referring others to this page is
probably not such a smart idea. Please visit
<a href="http://www.svnbook.com/">http://www.svnbook.com/</a>
for stable versions of this book.</p>
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<div class="sect1" title="Overview">
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<h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="svn.serverconfig.overview"></a>Overview</h2>
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<p>
<a id="idp15805936" class="indexterm"></a>Subversion was designed with an abstract repository
access layer. This means that a repository can be
programmatically accessed by any sort of server process, and the
client <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">repository access</span>”</span> API allows programmers
to write plug-ins that speak relevant network protocols. In
theory, Subversion can use an infinite number of network
implementations. In practice, there are only two Subversion
servers in widespread use today.</p>
<p>
<a id="idp15809104" class="indexterm"></a>
<a id="idp15810176" class="indexterm"></a>Apache HTTP Server (also known
as <span class="command"><strong>httpd</strong></span>) is an extremely popular web server;
using the <span class="command"><strong>mod_dav_svn</strong></span> module, Apache can
access a repository and make it available to clients via the
WebDAV/DeltaV protocol, which is an extension of HTTP. Because
Apache is an extremely extensible server, it provides a number
of features <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">for free,</span>”</span> such as encrypted SSL
communication, logging, integration with a number of third-party
authentication systems, and limited built-in web browsing of
repositories.</p>
<p>
<a id="idp15814416" class="indexterm"></a>In the other corner is <span class="command"><strong>svnserve</strong></span>:
a small, lightweight server program that speaks a custom
protocol with clients. Because its protocol is explicitly
designed for Subversion and is stateful (unlike HTTP), it
provides significantly faster network operations—but at
the cost of some features as well. While it can use SASL to
provide a variety of authentication and encryption options, it
has no logging or built-in web browsing. It is, however,
extremely easy to set up and is often the best option for small
teams just starting out with Subversion.</p>
<p>The network protocol which <span class="command"><strong>svnserve</strong></span>
speaks may also be tunneled over an SSH connection. This
deployment option for <span class="command"><strong>svnserve</strong></span> differs quite
a bit in features from a traditional <span class="command"><strong>svnserve</strong></span>
deployment. SSH is used to encrypt all communication. SSH is
also used exclusively to authenticate, so real system accounts
are required on the server host (unlike
vanilla <span class="command"><strong>svnserve</strong></span>, which has its own private
user accounts). Finally, because this setup requires that each
user spawn a private, temporary <span class="command"><strong>svnserve</strong></span>
process, it's equivalent (from a permissions point of view) to
allowing a group of local users to all access the repository
via <code class="literal">file://</code> URLs. Path-based access control
has no meaning, since each user is accessing the repository
database files directly.</p>
<p><a class="xref" href="svn.serverconfig.overview.html#svn.serverconfig.overview.tbl-1" title="Table 6.1. Comparison of Subversion server options">Table 6.1, “Comparison of Subversion server options”</a> provides a
quick summary of the three typical server deployments.</p>
<div class="table">
<a id="svn.serverconfig.overview.tbl-1"></a>
<p class="title">
<strong>Table 6.1. Comparison of Subversion server options</strong>
</p>
<div class="table-contents">
<table summary="Comparison of Subversion server options" border="1">
<colgroup>
<col />
<col />
<col />
<col />
</colgroup>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Feature</th>
<th>Apache + mod_dav_svn</th>
<th>svnserve</th>
<th>svnserve over SSH</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Authentication options</td>
<td>HTTP Basic or Digest auth, X.509 certificates, LDAP,
NTLM, or any other mechanism available to Apache httpd</td>
<td>CRAM-MD5 by default; LDAP, NTLM, or any other mechanism
available to SASL</td>
<td>SSH</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>User account options</td>
<td>Private <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">users</span>”</span> file, or other mechanisms
available to Apache httpd (LDAP, SQL, etc.)</td>
<td>Private <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">users</span>”</span> file, or other
mechanisms available to SASL (LDAP, SQL, etc.)</td>
<td>System accounts</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Authorization options</td>
<td>Read/write access can be granted over the whole
repository, or specified per path</td>
<td>Read/write access can be granted over the whole
repository, or specified per path</td>
<td>Read/write access only grantable over the whole
repository</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Encryption</td>
<td>Available via optional SSL (https)</td>
<td>Available via optional SASL features</td>
<td>Inherent in SSH connection</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Logging</td>
<td>High-level operational logging of Subversion
operations plus detailed logging at the
per-HTTP-request level</td>
<td>High-level operational logging only</td>
<td>High-level operational logging only</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Interoperability</td>
<td>Accessible by other WebDAV clients</td>
<td>Talks only to svn clients</td>
<td>Talks only to svn clients</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Web viewing</td>
<td>Limited built-in support, or via third-party tools
such as ViewVC</td>
<td>Only via third-party tools such as ViewVC</td>
<td>Only via third-party tools such as ViewVC</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Master-slave server replication</td>
<td>Transparent write-proxying available from slave to
master</td>
<td>Can only create read-only slave servers</td>
<td>Can only create read-only slave servers</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Speed</td>
<td>Somewhat slower</td>
<td>Somewhat faster</td>
<td>Somewhat faster</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Initial setup</td>
<td>Somewhat complex</td>
<td>Extremely simple</td>
<td>Moderately simple</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
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<p>You are reading <em>Version Control with Subversion</em> (for
Subversion 1.8), by Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick,
and C. Michael Pilato.</p>
<p>This work is licensed under
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<p>To submit comments, corrections, or other contributions to the
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