Friday, October 26, 2007

Subclipse - old client?

After updating my Mac with Subversion 1.4.4 and running a status on one of my Java folders I go the following error in Eclipse:

Unsupported working copy format svn: This client is too old to work with working copy '/Users/fred/workspace/Project/lib'; please get a newer Subversion client

Well, I immediately made sure that I was up-to-date, I am running Subclipse 1.2.4. To find your version, go to Help|Software Updates|Manage Configuration. You will see your version number there.


Obviously Subclipse 1.2.4 is running the old Sunversion client. I searched in several places to try to find a newer version but to no avail. I then explored SVNKit and found instructions for switching it on in Subclipse. SVNKit uses the newer Subversion 1.4 protocol and comes with Subclipse but it is not enabled by default.

To turn SVNKit on, goto Eclipse preferences and select SVNKit under the SVN option:



Click OK and you are ready to go with the latest version of SVN under Eclipse.

You will be asked to enter your password again or to choose your private key to use with the remote site if you are using ssh.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

OpenID

OpenID is a new way of authenticating yourself on the net. "[It's] an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity." (http://openid.net) It's very simple and seems to me to be very versatile although the descriptions of it leave a little to be desired. I've had a close look at it and I like it, so here's my interpretation of OpenID.

One Username for all

The idea is that you create a unique id that you register somewhere with a password. Then you use your unique id and password at all the sites you visit. One id, one password, very simple. Sounds very much like the derided Microsoft Passport, right? Well, the basics are there but OpenID is so very much more versatile and not in the control of one single corporation.

One way of creating a unique id is to use a URL that you can prove you are the owner of. You register a name and password at any OpenID server, you can have your own on your own server if you want. You get back a URL that you can use to sign in to OpenID enabled sites. Mine is http://specialk.myopenid.com. When I give that name to a site, it contacts the OpenID server at the URL given and the OpenID server asks me for my password.

Ok, so far, neat but not earth shattering, it's still very much like MS Passport.

Persona

The OpenID server tells me which site wants me to login (well, that's obvious) and also about the fields of information that the site is asking for. It allows me to create a new persona showing optional and required fields that the site is asking for or to use an existing persona. I can then opt to allow the login and give the credentials once, or always.



One Password Site

From a security point of view, my password goes to the server site, not the site I am logging in to. One nice thing about this is that the server does not always require my password because once I have signed into the OpenID server site, the server knows who I am, it just asks which persona I want to use.

Myopenid.com also keeps track of sites that have asked for my credentials but there are anonymous servers around too, one where you can just make up an OpenID URL and start using it.

Ok, pretty neat now, but what if I want to change my OpenID server or it goes belly up, do I have to re-register with all the sites I want to use? Well, no, because I don't have to use the server's URL for my identity I can use one that I will always have e.g. one from my own domain and redirect that page to the OpenID server of my choosing.

I have set up a page on my site to use as my OpenID URL, it is at http://www.somewhere.com/openid/myname. This page contains:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>
<link rel="openid.server"
href="https://www.myopenid.com/server">
<link rel="openid.delegate"
href="http://specialk.myopenid.com">
</head>

<body/>
What it does is redirect the request from the site you want to log into, to the real OpenID server. This allows mt to have a permanent OpenID URL entirely under my control and I can change the server whenever I like. The sites I log in to will know me by my somewhere.com URL.

Neato or what?

Links

There are only a handful of sites using OpenID so far but Digg are planning to use it, Microsoft and AOL are involved, this could be big.

There are already many software libraries to make it easy to use OpenID for your sites.

Public OpenID servers offer different service extras, you can shop around.