Why do you need the authentication and authorization plugin for Hudson?

The Authentication and Authorization plugin allows you to set up your Hudson installation to authenticate against a CollabNet server and specify access control for CollabNet users.

Note: Authentication and authorization are independent actions. You could set up your Hudson installation to authenticate against a SourceForge or TeamForge site, but not use that CollabNet site for authorizing users. Authorization is available only with CollabNet TeamForge 5.2, but authentication is possible with earlier CollabNet SourceForge Enterprise versions as well.

Authentication

Authentication determines usenames and passwords. You establish user credentials when you enable your Hudson site to use the CollabNet security realm.

Authorization

Authorization determines what users can do on the Hudson site.

Your Hudson server can be shared between many CollabNet projects, and you can grant TeamForge users permissions at the site level. You specify site-level permissions when you configure the site to use a CollabNet server for authorization.

A job on your Hudson server may be involved with more than one TeamForge project. For example, a job that builds software can pull in source code from multiple project repositories. For the purpose of authorization, however, each job is associated with one CollabNet project, and you can give users project-level roles.

When your Hudson site is set up to use CollabNet authorization, TeamForge project administrators can assign these roles to project members:

Hudson Build/Cancel
Hudson Configure
Hudson Delete
Hudson Promote
Hudson Read

Users get the highest permissions they are entitled to. For example, if a user is part of a group that has administration permissions for the Hudson site, that supersedes any Hudson-related role the user might be assigned within a specific CollabNet project.