Rick Strahl had a great recent post on Running VisualSVN Server for Subversion Source Control. I have been running VisualSVN Server for my repositories for a little while now and especially love how painless the setup is. Not to mention that VisualSVN Server is 100% free!
One part that I especially liked was the part I have been missing and that is anonymous access to repositories. I have been thinking about having this for awhile and with Rick's post I was able to allow it:
Anonymous Repository Access
Speaking about authentication and repository access permissions, one thing that took me a while to get though is how to configure anonymous access. By default Visual SVN Server requires users to log in to access the repository, even when the Everyone account is set up with ReadOnly access. Unfortunately VisualSVN Server doesn't appear to provide an option to enable this functionality and it turned out to be a bit frustrating to set up the Everyone account with ReadOnly access and still be prompted for a required username and password. By default the Everyone account still needs to be an authenticated account.
As I mentioned I'm a dork when it comes to Apache configuration, but the fix for this is easy (thanks to Matthieu who commented on a previous post) by using Satisfy Any in the virtual directory configuration:
<Location /svn/>
DAV svn
SVNListParentPath on
SVNParentPath "c:/SvnWestWind/"
SVNIndexXSLT "/svnindex.xsl"
SVNPathAuthz on
AuthName "Subversion Repositories"
AuthType Basic
AuthBasicProvider file
AuthUserFile "c:/SvnWestWind//htpasswd"
AuthzSVNAccessFile "c:/SvnWestWind//authz"
Satisfy Any
Require valid-user
</Location>
This is sweet! But in the comments on user asked how to do get the everyone set up and where to find the virtual directory configuration file. I had the same questions, but after about 3 minutes I figured it all out.
How to Get the Anonymous Access Up and Running on VisualSVN Server
1. Edit the file as in Rick's Post. The file can be found here:
%VisualSVN Server Root Install Directory%\conf\httpd.conf (most likely C:\Program Files\VisualSVN Server\conf\httpd.conf).
2. After you edit the file, restart the service for good measure (may not be required).
3. Open VisualSVN Server MMC snap in and right click on Repositories. Select {Properties...}. To do this for a single repository (instead of all, just select the properties of that repository instead).
4. Click {Add..} (on the Security tab).
5. Select Everyone. Click {OK}.
6. Change access to {Read Only}. Click {Apply}. Click {OK}.
7. Reload your web page or try to connect to the SVN repository with no username/password. You should be good to go! :D