Andrew Birkett has stumbled across an interesting side effect of using SVN checkouts for deploying Rails applications in that, without adequate protection, SVN metadata is made available for all to see. In many cases this means you can see the revision number, the username of the last person to commit or update, and information about the SVN repository used. Andrew links to SVN files found at 37signals.com, Penny Arcade, and StrongSpace, which, at the time of writing, are all still viewable by the public. Luckily this problem is easily fixed by using svn export or a mod_rewrite rule. (I haven’t tested this yet, but in theory I think this rewrite rule could work: RewriteRule ^.*\.svn.*$ [F] )

I was going to e-mail some of these folks about it, but my mail program is not showing that I have addresses for any of the people at these companies, so.. Read More

Robert Dempsey, Founder of Rails For All, Inc. (a new Rails advocacy group), and Gregg Pollack, CTO of ADS, will be presenting a one-hour session for managers and developers at DeVry University’s Orlando campus on Thursday, March 15 as part of the Orlando Ruby Group. There will be a free dinner, provided by Rails For All, so they suggest you arrive hungry! They say the session will focus on the business advantages behind Ruby on Rails and is particularly ideal for managers as well as developers looking for work. More details about the session can be found here. Read More