Re: using auth-source for authentication

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 13 May 2008 13:23:27 +0200 Michael Albinus <address@hidden> wrote: 

>> I've set up auth-source.el, currently in Gnus CVS and Emacs CVS.  It
>> lets users put their passwords in a single place.  Can it also be used
>> by Tramp?  I don't know the Tramp internals, but basically you'd end up
>> with lines like this
>> 
>> machine xyz.com port scp login tzz password WHATEVER
>> 
>> in your netrc/authinfo file.  The API is really simple, Tramp just has
>> to call auth-source-user-or-password with "login" or "password" and the
>> hostname and protocol.
>> 
>> I can add this support to Tramp, but I thought I'd ask first because
>> it's a pretty complicated package.

MA> It would be OK with me. The best place to add it seems to be
MA> `tramp-read-passwd'. Maybe the initial value of `tramp-default-method'
MA> shall be adapted too.

MA> For ports, Tramps uses numbers only. Do you support it as well?

It's OK to use numbers, but it's much better to use port names.
Otherwise users end up with many identical entries except for the port
number, and it's annoying to have to remember the ports for all the
services you need (see /etc/services :)  We can do one of the following:

- call the protocol "tramp" and have it match any Tramp protocol (this
  makes sense, since it's extremely rare to have multiple passwords per
  account on a machine, and auth-source is all about simplicity)

- pass a protocol name based on the port or inferred from the file
  handler (probably hardest to implement, but also would allow for the
  rare case of multiple passwords I mentioned above)

- keep using numbers, my least favorite solution as I explained

What's your preference?

Ted