2.2.2 File permissions

All ‘,v’ files are created read-only, and you should not change the permission of those files. The directories inside the repository should be writable by the persons that have permission to modify the files in each directory. This normally means that you must create a UNIX group (see group(5)) consisting of the persons that are to edit the files in a project, and set up the repository so that it is that group that owns the directory. (On some systems, you also need to set the set-group-ID-on-execution bit on the repository directories (see chmod(1)) so that newly-created files and directories get the group-ID of the parent directory rather than that of the current process.)

This means that you can only control access to files on a per-directory basis.

Note that users must also have write access to check out files, because CVS needs to create lock files (see Concurrency). You can use LockDir in CVSROOT/config to put the lock files somewhere other than in the repository if you want to allow read-only access to some directories (see config).

Also note that users must have write access to the CVSROOT/val-tags file. CVS uses it to keep track of what tags are valid tag names (it is sometimes updated when tags are used, as well as when they are created).

Each RCS file will be owned by the user who last checked it in. This has little significance; what really matters is who owns the directories.

CVS tries to set up reasonable file permissions for new directories that are added inside the tree, but you must fix the permissions manually when a new directory should have different permissions than its parent directory. If you set the CVSUMASK environment variable, that will control the file permissions which CVS uses in creating directories and/or files in the repository. CVSUMASK does not affect the file permissions in the working directory; such files have the permissions which are typical for newly created files, except that sometimes CVS creates them read-only (see the sections on watches, Setting a watch; -r, Global options; or CVSREAD, Environment variables).

Note that using the client/server CVS (see Remote repositories), there is no good way to set CVSUMASK; the setting on the client machine has no effect. If you are connecting with rsh, you can set CVSUMASK in .bashrc or .cshrc, as described in the documentation for your operating system. This behavior might change in future versions of CVS; do not rely on the setting of CVSUMASK on the client having no effect.

Using pserver, you will generally need stricter permissions on the CVSROOT directory and directories above it in the tree; see Password authentication security.

Some operating systems have features which allow a particular program to run with the ability to perform operations which the caller of the program could not. For example, the set user ID (setuid) or set group ID (setgid) features of unix or the installed image feature of VMS. CVS was not written to use such features and therefore attempting to install CVS in this fashion will provide protection against only accidental lapses; anyone who is trying to circumvent the measure will be able to do so, and depending on how you have set it up may gain access to more than just CVS. You may wish to instead consider pserver. It shares some of the same attributes, in terms of possibly providing a false sense of security or opening security holes wider than the ones you are trying to fix, so read the documentation on pserver security carefully if you are considering this option (Password authentication security).