Re: [Gnu-arch-users] proposal : ~/.authinfo

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Matthieu Moy <address@hidden>

    > I  didn't find any  other way  to specify  a password  for an  HTTP or
    > webdav archive than giving the password in clear in the URL like

    > http://user:address@hidden/

    > I don't  like this  very much,  because then, it  is displayed  on the
    > screen when one use a command like "tla archives". 

    > So, I would like to implement a ~/.authinfo mechanism. 
    > 
    > The file ~/.authinfo would contain several lines

    > machine XXX login YYY password ZZZ 

    > I'll first  try to implement  this for http authentication,  and then,
    > extend this  to proxy  authentication. (I've found  a patch  for proxy
    > authentication on  this list, but  it hadn't been accepted  because it
    > used environment variable.  Will this feature be accepted  if I manage
    > to implement it ?)

    > Any remarks on this ?

    > Should I implement  it on tla 1.2  or do you suggest I  upgrade to the
    > latest development version for that ? 

Branch off of the recently created 1.3 line, please.

I'm not so sure that "machine/login/password" is the right idea.
Shouldn't that be, instead, something more flexible and generic like:


    url "http://%s:address@hidden/"; YOURUSERNAMEHERE YOURPASSWORDHERE

and then you can register an archive with something like:


    tla register-archive $ARCHIVENAME http://%s:address@hidden/$PATH

Finally, "~/.authinfo" is an ambitiously generic name.   It'd be swell
to write up a little formal spec of this functionality and to publish
it as an arch-independent library with absolutely minimal
dependencies.

-t