Here‘s a simple way to configure Subversion to authenticate a user using Unix credentials (through http) with Apache, pwauth and mod_authnz_external. Its not really rocket science, and its not anything that others aren’t already doing (the post is over 3 years old), but it certainly is useful.
I like authenticating Subversion users in this way because it offers a very convenient non-LDAP approach for a development group. It allows me to maintain the ability to add and remove users and access levels from any repository and do so using the same user accounts that are already present within our development environment. This assumes, of course, that users of Subversion have a user account on the Subversion server. There are a few hoops to jump through, such as adding the mod and pwauth, but nothing too severe.
There are some gotchas to be aware of when setting up pwauth, such as compile with the correct user access SERVER_UIDS and MIN_UNIX_UID.