Question

Is it possible to use SVN over SSH without using svnserve, and just the one from Tigris?

Thanks,
tesmar

Answer 1

— Edited after responses below —

You mentioned that you want SVN over SSH but you don’t want svnserve. Without something to reply to the requests, like a server or something, your requests will arrive at the end of the SSH tunnel to be handled by nobody. Svnserve is the basic default server which responds to requests and replies with the requested information.

The HTTPS Apache module mod_svn calls the same libraries that svnserve would call, except that it relies on Apache’s HTTP server to do the network handling. You state that HTTPS is slower than using svnserver. You are probably correct, but that has a lot to do with the nature of HTTP traffic in general, and little to do with the SVN bits.

I think you need something to respond to the requests, so if you don’t want to use the provided mod_svn or the provided svnserve server, then you’ll have to write something from scratch. Otherwise, the requests will arrive at the desired machine and not be served.

If you don’t like the idea of svnserve running all the time, since it is a service, you can configure it to start up upon receiving a request and shutdown after the request has been handled. It does delay the handling of requests somewhat, because each request has to wait till the service start is complete and the service can handle the request.

— Original post follows —

You could do SVN over HTTPS. It will give you the encryption of SSH, and the SVN server code will be called by an Apache Module.

This has the advantage of offloading some of the configuration issues (access, etc) to Apache’s HTTP software stack, which means better support for more types of authentication, url filtering to restrict access, etc.

This has the disadvantage of adding to SVN administration some HTTP administration. It’s not a big disadvantage (as many places have to administer HTTP anyway), but it does split the SVN admin duties across two systems.