Alexander Staubo wrote, at 11/23/2007 09:52 AM: > In the Unix world -- meaning pretty much everywhere outside Microsoft > shops -- SSH is all-pervasive, and has been for the last ten years or > so, whereas WebDAV is a standard widely seen to have failed miserably > (in part due to its complexity), now a niche technology largely > relevant to calendaring, being supplanted by the Atom [1] for other > applications such as publishing. For Subversion, svn+ssh seems more > common than WebDAV these days.
[snip] > ...I think I will revise my > perspective of WebDAV: a flawed technology that is, somehow, wildly > popular on some planet I don't care about visiting, but popular > nonetheless. I use SSH with public key authentication dozens of times every day. It's so painless and convenient, I've often been mystified that SSH hasn't been bundled with Windows since Windows '98 (but then, full Remote Desktop support isn't standard with all versions of Windows, either, so I shouldn't be surprised). Nonetheless, while I use SSH on *NIX systems and enjoy its convenience and flexibility as an administrator, there is one area not mentioned by the OP where WebDAV may have an advantage: Virtual user support for file transfers. WebDAV may still have some administration and usability issues (I only use it for a calendar server and have set up mod_dav_svn for others), but I'm extremely reluctant to give full shell access to a user that only needs SFTP support. FTP, SCP, SFTP and WebDAV (using digest authentication and/or SSL) all have significant caveats, not the least of which is widespread client support. Sadly, none of them would compare to rsync with virtual user support, SASL integration, and encryption via TLS. When I can, I do all of my file tranfers using rsync+ssh, and and it blows everything else away. It would be nice if something similar was available to general users without posing a security risk. _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
