Ubuntu – Getting permissions on Ubuntu to create Eclipse project

There is no way to do this out of the box. If you're only going to be doing it rarely, the manual process of denying on the parent folders is going to be most efficient.

If, however, this is a task you think you'll find yourself repeating fairly often, you can create a utility using the TFS API to do it for you.

(Something along these lines. Warning, this is not tested)

vcs = //...VersionControlServer reference...

string checkinPath = @"$/MyProject/Sources/Whatever";
string identityName = @"[MyProject]\Contributors";
string[] removesNone = new string[]{ };    
string[] allowsNone = new string[]{ };
string[] deniesNone = new string[]{ };
string[] allowsCheckin = new string[]{ PermissionChange.ItemCheckin };
string[] deniesCheckin = new string[]{ PermissionChange.ItemCheckin };


PermissionChange pc = new PermissionChange(
    checkinPath, identityName, allowsCheckin, deniesNone, removesNone);

vcs.SetPermissions(new SecurityChange[]{ pc } );

// walk up the path denying on parent folders
checkinPath = checkinPath.Substring(0, checkinPath.LastIndexOf('/'));
while (checkinPath.Length > 2)
{
        PermissionChange pc = new PermissionChange(
            checkinPath, identityName, allowsNone, deniesCheckin, removesNone);

        vcs.SetPermissions(new SecurityChange[]{ pc } );

        checkinPath = checkinPath.Substring(0, checkinPath.LastIndexOf('/'));
}

After more research it seems like another (possibly better way) to answer this would be to setup the www folder like so.

1. sudo usermod -a -G developer user1 (add each user to developer group)
2. sudo chgrp -R developer /var/www/site.com/ so that developers can work in there
3. sudo chmod -R 2774 /var/www/site.com/ so that only developers can create/edit files (other/world can read)
4. sudo chgrp -R www-data /var/www/site.com/uploads so that www-data (apache/nginx) can create uploads.

Since git runs as whatever user is calling it, then as long as the user is in the "developer" group they should be able to create folders, edit PHP files, and manage the git repository.

Note: In step (3): '2' in 2774 means to 'set Group ID' for the directory. This causes new files and sub directories created within it to inherit the group ID of the parent directory (instead of the primary group of the user) Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setuid#setuid_and_setgid_on_directories