Bug in client's handling of value specified for the 'ssl-authority-files' parameter maintained in ~/.subversion/servers

[je...@ubs.com]

Hello,

The Subversion book published at
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn-book.html says, quote:

	"Your run-time servers file also gives you the ability to make
your Subversion client automatically trust specific CAs, either globally
or on a per-host basis. Simply set the ssl-authority-files variable to a
semicolon-separated list of PEM-encoded CA certificates:

		[global]
		ssl-authority-files =
/path/to/CAcert1.pem;/path/to/CAcert2.pem

	Many OpenSSL installations also have a pre-defined set of
"default" CAs that are nearly universally trusted. To make the
Subversion client automatically trust these standard authorities, set
the ssl-trust-default-ca variable to true."

Assuming that first statement is true, consider the following
~/.subversion/servers file:

	[groups]
	subversion = subversion.domain.com
	foo = foo.domain.com
	bar = bar.domain.com
	whatever = *.domain.com

	[global]
	ssl-authority-files =
/home/foo/certs/some_cert.pem;/home/bar/certs/some_other_cert.pem
	ssl-trust-default-ca = yes

When one but not all of the following paths resolve to valid, readable
PEM-encoded CA certificates:

	/home/foo/certs/some_cert.pem
	/home/bar/certs/some_other_cert.pem

and further, for purposes of illustration, let's say that the latter
path /home/bar/certs/some_other_cert.pem, does not exist, then the
client will preemptively abort any operation involving a trip to the
server with the following error message:

	svn: Invalid config: unable to load certificate file
'/home/bar/certs/some_other_cert.pem'

If this is the intended behavior, please justify it on practical
grounds.  I believe it is more useful for the client to *not* abort in
cases where any of the specified PEM-encoded CA certificate file paths
do not resolve (or perhaps resolve to an invalid file); it should
instead carry on with the user-specified operation if *any* of the
certificate files validate the specified SSL-wrapped URL.

Sincerely,

Jeff Bunds

Visit our website at http://www.ubs.com

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