svnserve allows access to Subversion repositories using Subversion’s custom network protocol.
You can run svnserve as a
standalone server process (for clients that are using the svn://
access method); you can have a daemon
such as inetd or xinetd launch it for you on demand (also for
svn://
), or you can have sshd launch it on demand for the svn+ssh://
access
method.
Regardless of the access method, once the client has selected a repository by transmitting its URL, svnserve reads a file named conf/svnserve.conf in the repository directory to determine repository-specific settings such as what authentication database to use and what authorization policies to apply. See svnserve, a Custom Server for details of the svnserve.conf file.