On 25/01/06, grok@resist.ca grok@resist.ca wrote:
I understand very well the stance being taken by the Mediawiki developers; but it seems to me that there's a crying need for at least some sort of systematic extension/module capability for normal GNUnix-type permissions/file access, if not for ACL/SELinux type stuff.
Well, it's time to roll out the old open source response: "so do it!" There are now a growing number of extension hooks (see docs/hooks.txt in the source) built in to the software, so it may in fact be possible to do all of this without major modification to the core code (maybe the addition of a few extra hooks, or tightening up general security in generally helpful ways). As you say, I'm sure such code would be extremely popular if it worked reliably (which is the biggest problem; if you want access controls, you presumably want them to be secure...)
One thing that ought to be pointed out straight away though, is that you seem to making a lot of mentions of "files", "directories", and technologies related to those. MediaWiki stores all pages in a database, in a basically 'flat' structure - it has no hierarchical structure, although pages are grouped into a small number of 'namespaces' (1 each for articles, discussions, policy, file descriptions, etc). You possibly already knew this, or would soon have discovered, but particularly your first message made me wonder if you had the wrong image.
-- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]