Re: [PATCH] git-send-email: add ~/.authinfo parsing

From: Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>
Date: Jan 30, 2013, 15:03 UTC
Message-ID: <87vcae90hr.fsf@lifelogs.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vvcafojf4.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:53:19 -0800 Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

JCH> Makes one wonder why .authinfo and not .netrc;

JCH> http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/auth/Help-for-users.html

JCH> phrases it amusingly:

JCH> “Netrc” files are usually called .authinfo or .netr JCH> nowadays .authinfo seems to be more popular and the JCH> auth-source library encourages this confusion by accepting JCH> both

I wrote this and the auth-source.el library in Emacs (I'm glad it was amusing :). The confusion is further perpetuated by our (in Emacs) encouragement to use a .authinfo.gpg file, which is then decrypted on the fly by Emacs through GPG. The format is the same; by the time auth-source.el sees the contents, they are plain text since the decoding happens at the file handler level.

I think it makes sense to write the code to support both `git-send-email' and credentials. I have had it in my TODO list for almost 2 years now to work on credential support, and to support the ~/.authinfo.gpg decoding specifically. Ideally this would also support the other formats... Michal, would you be interested in that feature? I promise to get off my rear and help out.

Show 6 quoted lines

>> +The '~/.authinfo' file is read if Text::CSV Perl module is installed
>> +on the system; if it's missing, a notification message will be printed
>> +and the file ignored altogether.  The file should contain a line with
>> +the following format:
>> ++
>> +  machine <domain> port <port> login <user> password <pass>

JCH> It is rather strange to require a comma-separated-values parser to JCH> read a file format this simple, isn't it?

I'd recommend a hand-crafted parser. Among other things, you should accept both "strings" and 'strings' if possible (I've seen both formats in the wild), and the format is simple enough to avoid the module dependency.

>> ++
>> +Contrary to other tools, 'git-send-email' does not support symbolic
>> +port names like 'imap' thus `<port>` must be a number.

JCH> Perhaps you can convert at least some popular ones yourself? After JCH> all, the user may be using an _existing_ .authinfo/.netrc that she JCH> has been using with other programs that do understand symbolic port JCH> names. Rather than forcing all such users to update their files, JCH> the patch can work a bit harder for them and the world will be a JCH> better place, no?

I agree, "port imap" is a nice self-documenting token. Maybe it can be interpreted by the program that requests the token with a services lookup, where supported.

Ted