Re: [9fans] Sources Gone?

[Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com>]

> There was a question on this list not long time ago whether
> getting access to venti blocks of the sources would be possible.
> The answer at the time was "no". This is understandable since
> the stock venti doesn't really offer any kind of security
> mechanism for doing that.
>
> However, the very fact that somebody else asked that question suggests
> that the feature is not useless one.

It's certainly not useless.  Lots of interesting systems,
Git included, have been built on such arrangements.
It usually makes more sense in those systems to isolate
the blocks in question into their own storage place,
exactly so that you can avoid those security issues.

The problem with sources venti is that the venti server
that handles sources handles a collection of servers,
and there is no easy way in the venti model to only
allow access to the blocks used within the public
sources filesystem.

Russ