Authentication Options

At this point, if you configured httpd.conf to contain something like

<Location /svn>
  DAV svn
  SVNParentPath /var/svn
</Location>

…then your repository is “anonymously” accessible to the world. Until you configure some authentication and authorization policies, the Subversion repositories you make available via the Location directive will be generally accessible to everyone. In other words,

  • anyone can use their Subversion client to check out a working copy of a repository URL (or any of its subdirectories),

  • anyone can interactively browse the repository's latest revision simply by pointing their web browser to the repository URL, and

  • anyone can commit to the repository.

Of course, you might have already set up a pre-commit hook script to prevent commits (see the section called “Implementing Repository Hooks”). But as you read on, you'll see that it's also possible use Apache's built-in methods to restrict access in specific ways.

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