Re: Bug#399305: ITP: subversive -- The Subversive is a Eclipse plug-in that provides Subversion support
On Sun, Nov 19, 2006 at 05:59:52PM +0100, Loïc Minier wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 19, 2006, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> > Compatibility is not the question. It is clearly inferior. For one, it
> > has no support for JavaHL. At least everything I can find on the
> > upstream web site indicates that it only supports JavaSVN. Anyhow, what
> > this means is that the only way to make use of ssh keys is by providing
> > your passphrase every time or by having it stored in plain text on your
> > hard drive.
>
> "clearly inferior" sounds a bit strong on this basis alone. I went
> through the features described on the website, and some seemed to be
> lacking in subclipse. And we don't have subclipse in Debian (yet).
>
I understand that it is a bit strong. However, any setup which requires
me to let the application store my passphrase in plain text on the hard
drive is wrong. It is that simple. Of course, I could enter my
passphrase for every single access, but then what is the point? For
that I am better off without a key and with a password as far as
convenience.
For example, the main subversion servers I use (one internal to my
network, one at work and svn.debian.org) are all configured for svn+ssh
and the ssh daemons on every one of those machines is configured to
allow only key-based logins. Thus, subversive would be completely
unusable to me as it does not support JavaHL.
> I'm asking about compatibility because I am currenlty using the
> subclipse plugin (and it is being packaged for Debian), installed
> locally, but would like to switch painlessly to anything which appears
> first in Debian and covers my basic needs.
>
I too use Suclipse. I had to backport a newer version of subversion
from source and build it with the Sun JDK to get the javahl library
built (I am running Sarge). JavaHL allows the application to interact
with the ssh-agent, which JavaSVN apparently cannot do.
> > This is because JavaSVN has no way to communicate to an ssh-agent. I
> > have emailed the JavaSVN developers about it. AFAIK they have no
> > intentions of trying to support ssh-agent because it is either not
> > possible or too hard with JavaSVN.
> >
> > This means that if you want to use your svn+ssh repo in half-way secure
> > fashion, you can't with this plugin. Probably better to stick with
> > subclipse.
>
> Does it work if you load your keys (and type your passphrase) before
> using JavaSVN? And if you have a graphical ssh-askpass installed?
>
No. I have keychain installed, which is setup to prompt me for my
passphrases right at login. Since this process is the parent process of
the WM, all processes run from the WM inherit the environment, including
the environment variables that identify the ssh-agent.
Unfortunately, JavaSVN does not support this. Since the upstream
developers develop primarily (exclusivey?) in windows, they basically
don't care about supporting features in proper operating systems, since
those features are inaccessible to them. Or something like that. I had
some discussion about it with them a while back which should still be in
their mailing list archives.
Regards,
-Roberto
--
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://people.connexer.com/~roberto
http://www.connexer.com
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