Re: [JGIT RFC PATCH] Add a stdio prompt for SSH connection information.

From: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Date: Jun 22, 2008, 23:13 UTC
Message-ID: <20080622231355.GH11793@spearce.org>
In-Reply-To: <200806222306.25434.robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com>

Robin Rosenberg <robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Starting a command line utility like jgit and getting a graphical prompt is almost
> an insult. The problem here is that Java 5, which we support, does not have a
> portable way of disabling echoing of characters. Java 6 (and anythung newr)
> does. There are several solutions involving non-portable tricks. Should we 
> support an insecure practice of echoing passwords, or as I do here, only support
> it if one is using Java 6. A downside of supporting it at all is that one needs a
> JavaSE 6 compiler to build the thing.

We really shouldn't support insecure entry of the password.  But I'm
also not ready to give up on Java 5 support either.  I wonder if
we shouldn't hide the console reading/writing into a class in our
util package and use reflection to access it, like we do for the
executable flag of java.io.File.

> btw, does anyone know if console() yields null when runnings as a Windows
> service? I tentatively assume that it does without explicily setting the headless
> property.

I think that services on Windows have no console, and also can't talk to the desktop UI, so its both headless and without a console.

> I'm also a little unsure about how to invoke the promptKeyboardInteractive method.

I think you implemented this method correctly.  Its a confusing API,
but it does seem to make sense.

-- 
Shawn.