[pLog-svn] Fwd: CommitBit web config tool for Subversion

[Jon Daley]

In case anyone is interested:


We've been opening up our code a bit lately. I know that sounds weird 
coming from an open source company, but we've traditionally been very, 
very cautious with who gets a "commit bit" to our products.  Only two or 
three people outside Best Practical have commit rights to RT.  SVK has a 
richer cast of characters.  With Jifty, we've fully embraced Audrey Tang's 
methodology. When she's feeling confrontational, she calls it "Anarchistic 
Development." When she's talking to folks with a more Web 2.0 bent, she 
calls it "Wiki Style Development".  Just about anybody who shows up has 
commit privileges thrust upon them.  It's worked amazingly well for Pugs. 
So we figured we'd try it for Jifty.

If we were hosting Jifty somewhere like SourceForge or Google Code, we 
could just add people by email address and the system would take care of 
sending them email, getting them a password and so on.  We really prefer 
to host things locally, which left us in a bit of a vacuum. We couldn't 
find a single good tool for handing out commit bits and managing projects 
in a Subversion repository.

I bet you can tell where this is going. We've got another new project.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please allow me to present CommitBit, a subversion 
access management system with built in support for a "code.example.com" 
style project directory.

CommitBit lets you, the administrator, set up repositories and projects 
through a simple web interface. You can grant an individual a commit or 
admin bit to a specific project just by typing his or her email address 
into CommitBit's web ui.  Project administrators can, somewhat 
unsurprisingly, grant commit or admin bits to others through the same 
interface.  CommitBit takes care of notifying the new project member, 
setting up their password and so on.

On the backend, CommitBit can set up new subversion repositories or work 
with preexisting local repositories. It manages a bunch of files so you 
don't have to:

     * htpasswd files for svn over WebDAV
     * passwd files for svnserve
     * authz files that work with both
     * an apache2 configuration snippet

On the "codedot" side, you a project listing, the ability to spotlight 
whatever's currently hot and per-project overview pages with lists of 
committers, pointers to your bug tracker, wiki, mailing lists, Subversion 
repository, repository browser and so on.

If you're interested in CommitBit, you can find out more about it at 
code.bestpractical.com:

http://code.bestpractical.com/project/CommitBit

Best,

Jesse