On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 at 23:37, brian m. carlson
[off-list ref] wrote:

On 2024-03-25 at 23:16:09, M Hickford wrote:

quoted

quoted

+`authtype`::
+   This indicates that the authentication scheme in question should be used.
+   Common values for HTTP and HTTPS include `basic`, `digest`, and `ntlm`,
+   although the latter two are insecure and should not be used.  If `credential`
+   is used, this may be set to an arbitrary string suitable for the protocol in
+   question (usually HTTP).

How about adding 'bearer' to this list? Popular hosts Bitbucket
https://bitbucket.org and Gitea/Forgejo (such as https://codeberg.org)
support Bearer auth with OAuth tokens.

Sure, I can do that.

quoted

quoted

++
+This value should not be sent unless the appropriate capability (see below) is
+provided on input.
+
+`credential`::
+   The pre-encoded credential, suitable for the protocol in question (usually
+   HTTP).  If this key is sent, `authtype` is mandatory, and `username` and
+   `password` are not used.

A credential protocol attribute named 'credential' is confusing. How
about 'authorization' since it determines the HTTP Authorization
header? This detail is surely worth mentioning too.

Would it be accurate to add "For HTTP, Git concatenates the authtype
and credential attributes to determine the Authorization header"?

I don't want this to be very specific to HTTP, so I don't think that's a
great name.  As I mentioned in the cover letter, I might well extend
this to IMAP and SMTP for our mail handling in the future, and that name
wouldn't work well there.

Good point, you've dissuaded me against 'authorization'.

I named it `credential` because, well, it's the credential that's used
in the protocol.  I feel like saying that the field represents "the
authorization" sounds unnatural.  It's not wrong, per se, but it sounds
confusing.

We already use 'credential' to describe the whole collection of
attributes, as in "The credential is split into a set of named
attributes".

I'm open to other ideas if you or others have them, but between these
two, I think I'd prefer to stick with `credential`.

Ideas anyone?

--
brian m. carlson (they/them or he/him)
Toronto, Ontario, CA