How to incorporate SVN and Confluence to control access to files?
My boss wants us to use subversion for our MS Word documentation. The idea is, only our department has access to the Word documents, so we update and commit changes to them.
But we want to share these documents with certain other people in our company. We use confluence to control access.
Currently, when we update the Word document, we commit to SVN and then update the attachment (viewed as a page) in Confluence. This allows us to email a URL to a certain document, and only permits people with the correct permissions in Confluence to see it. This is what we want.
Is there any way to have Confluence reference the most recent version of the file specified in SVN? I would like to commit changes to SVN and have users always see the most recent version in Confluence.
Answer
This request can't be satisfied, because you're asking for features that span from other products by Atlassian. The closest match to this request is to embed links to Atlassian Fisheye in Confluence, going through one layer of indirection ([Confluence]->[Fisheye]->[SVN]).
Actual Confluence integration for SVN does not exist, because it falls outside the bounds of Confluence's product scope. Instead, Atlassian provides other tools for this purpose, like Fisheye and JIRA, to interface with SVN directly.
If you would like to develop a service stack that comes as close as possible to your boss' original request, consider following this tutorial for establishing the full, integrated suite that Atlassian provides. Anything beyond this should be looked into by way of plugins from the community or from the company itself.
(Full disclosure: I neither work for Atlassian nor have any pre-existing business relationship with them. I've simply used their software within companies to whom I've been employed.)