What source control systems have file level permissions?

Question

I might propose migrating away from VSS due to its inability to grant and deny permissions at the file level. The question is what source control systems allow this.

Update I am marking the SVN answer as the "correct" one, since it had the most feedback. However, there is no correct answer. I will make my recommendations to management based on all your feedback.

Answer 1

subversion does too, but the ACL is managed in a configuration file

Answer 2

Perforce does.

Answer 3

I'm not really answering your question, but I think it's not a very useful feature to have permissions on VCS. People should know where they're allowed to commit, people should be reviewing commits, and if someone's committing where they're not supposed to:

• You catch it in the review
• You roll back the change (which is what a VCS is designed for)
• You figure out why: was it a mistake, or on purpose?

If you're worried that people will make unauthorized changes, then you have a social problem that the permissions won't fix. If you're worried that people will accidentally make changes to the wrong code, then you have a different social problem (lack of review) that the permissions also won't fix.

Answer 4

Whatever its other flaws, IBM Rational Clearcase does support file-level permission controls. It also has other mechanisms that you can use - notably triggers which can be written to cause an otherwise permitted checkin to fail.

Answer 5

Mercurial does, with the bundled Acl extension

Answer 6

If you are using VSS now, Team Foundation Version Control (TFVS) is the logical upgrade, especially if your corporate mandate is Microsoft-only tools.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms364074.aspx

Answer 7

Take a look at Plastic SCM and it's ACL model.