Re: [Monotone-devel] rfc: new password prompter (unix-only)

[Justin Patrin]

On 5/7/07, Zack Weinberg <address@hidden> wrote:
> On net.venge.monotone.read-password-from-dev-tty you will find a
> reimplemented unix/read_password.cc.  This represents a few hours'
> hacking while stuck in the airport on Saturday, and it does two
> things.  First, it implements the Unix best practice of reading the
> password from /dev/tty when available, instead of stdin - this breaks
> the testsuite, I'm not sure exactly what to do about that yet,
> possibly a --passphrase-fd option a la gpg.  Second, I made it move
> the cursor back and forth (without printing anything) as the user
> types.  I did this mainly because I was bored, but I do think it's
> better UI; it makes clear that, for instance, backspace works.
> However, it is not the standard Unix thing, and I'm open to arguments
> that it should not be done.  I'm also open to arguments of the form
> "that's a good idea but OMGZ why did you implement it like that?!"...

Sounds like a good idea to me, although a switch to "turn it off" for
testing, scripting, etc would be good.

As for moving the cursor I think that's a great idea. I'll try tetsing
it to see if it lives up to my expectations.

> Also, it needs test cases (in addition to fixing the test cases it
> breaks), and for that we need to mess around with pseudoterminals in
> the test suite.  Left to my own devices, I will probably use expect
> and skip those tests if the user doesn't have it, but yanno, if
> someone wants to add pty support to tester.cc, be my guest :-)

--
Justin Patrin