Re: encrypted netrc for Git (was: [Wishlist] could git tell which password it is asking when asking a password.)

On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 09:05:50AM -0500, Ted Zlatanov wrote:

On Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:04:02 -0500 Ted Zlatanov [off-list ref] wrote: 

TZ> On Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:59:09 +0200 Rémi Vanicat [off-list ref] wrote: 

RV> It would be interesting also to plug some sort of password-safe unto
RV> git, or some "git-agent". 

TZ> This would also be really nice.  ~/.netrc is not a great place to put
TZ> passwords for the HTTP transport.  In GNU Emacs we have ~/.authinfo.gpg
TZ> with the same content as ~/.netrc but encrypted by GPG and thus more
TZ> secure (the user is either prompted for the password, if the file is
TZ> encrypted symmetrically, or the user simply loads their private key into
TZ> the GPG agent).  I believe all this can be done with the GPGME library.
TZ> There's also the Secrets API on newer Gnome and KDE installs, which has
TZ> a pretty nice D-Bus interface.

TZ> But is this a libcurl feature request?  Or can a Git plugin (an
TZ> alternate HTTPS transport maybe?) handle it?

Ping?  I'd like to work on this if it seems like a feasible feature.

Check out:

  https://github.com/peff/git/commits/jk/http-auth

which provides an interface for getting credentials from external
helpers.

I need to write docs for a few of the top commits before posting the
patches to the list, but other than that, it should be fairly solid and
usable. And I'd love to get feedback from somebody trying to write a new
helper for it (i.e., to tell if the interface to the helpers is good
enough).

-Peff