Re: [PATCH 3/3] daemon: Support a --user-path option.

From: Mark Wooding <mdw@distorted.org.uk>
Date: Feb 4, 2006, 10:02 UTC
Message-ID: <slrndu8utr.2i8.mdw@metalzone.distorted.org.uk>
In-Reply-To: <7vr76kcggx.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net> wrote:

> I am probably slow as usual but I do not see how this is useful.

I don't want the git-daemon roaming all over the file system. Partly, as a systems administrator, it makes me nervous about security (not for any particularly good reason, I admit), but mainly because I don't want to be exposing my local filesystem structure in my git://... namespace -- it just seems like a bad idea. This is what --base-path is all about.

I do still want users to be able to publish their repositories. But I also don't want git-daemon wandering all over their home directories -- restriction to sensible places is what --base-path is for, after all.

Show 6 quoted lines

> Wouldn't loosening the "request must be absolute if you use
> --base-path" check in the area your first patch in the series
> touches to also allow paths that start with a '~' be enough?
> That way ~alice/foo would remain to be /home/alice/foo (with
> /home/alice being alice's $HOME) and ~becky/bar would be
> /home2/becky/bar (with /home2/becky being becky's $HOME).

That would still expose the structure of everyone's home directories in git://~user URLs, which is rather unfortunate. It's better than nothing, though.

> I suppose you are doing something similar to ~/public_html, but
> I think that is an independent feature.

This is what I'm after, yes. The above can be achieved straightforwardly with --user-path=. if that's what you actually wanted. (Indeed, --user-path= works too, but this is harder to explain.)

I think I'd probably either run with --user-path=public-git or --user-path=public_html/git -- I've not made my mind up.

-- [mdw]