Question

I have a directory structure in my SVN repository which is pretty standard:

/project1
   /trunk
   /branches
      /branch1
      /branch2
      ...
   /tags
/project2
   /trunk
   /branches
      ...

I’m using Apache with mod_dav_svn to host the repository.

I would like to prevent people from accidentally checking out the root of a project or the root of the entire repository, which needlessly downloads many, many gigabytes of files, and usually causes all kinds of problems.

Answer 1

You can use mod_dontdothat for this. See the docs:

Specifically, it’s designed to keep
users from doing things that are
particularly hard on the server, like
checking out the root of the tree, or
the tags or branches directories. It
works by sticking an input filter in
front of all REPORT requests and
looking for dangerous types of
requests. If it finds any, it returns
a 403 Forbidden error.