Subject: Re: Implement --password option for git svn perl script

From: Steve Diver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:01:15 +0000

On 02/02/2010 09:05, Eric Wong wrote:
>
> Laszlo Papp<[email-masked]>  wrote:
>>> The basic requirement is git svn can provide a way to prompt a dialog
>>> box to input passwd.
>>
>> Yeah, it's a very basic use case, but I don't know whether there is a
>> workaround for it somehow, maybe perl gurus or git svn users could
>> help more...
>>
>> My company, where there are windows users (95% of the company), would
>> like to use TortoiseGIT as a graphical client for SVN server
>> repositories as an SVN client, no other way by us, so it'd be high
>> priority :) So I've got a beer for any volunteer, thanks :P
>
> Hi, (fixed subject so I don't mistake it for junk again)
>
> I don't know (and have no way to test) how to deal with input dialogs
> for reading a password on Windows (nor any sort of IPC).  Somebody else
> will have to implement it.
>
> Having a --password option in the command line could work, but it's
> painfully insecure if there's any way for another regular user to view
> the process table.  Not something I'd like to encourage...
>
> Since SVN already caches passwords in a mostly secure location on disk
> (at least on *nix), shouldn't git svn be able to use the password cache
> SVN uses?
>

Tortoise, along with at least one other Windows GUI utilizes the Putty 
suite as a helper app for key chain and password handling, and needs to 
be loaded prior to any SSH operations. Tortoise have gone so far as to 
rewrite plink (Tortoiseplink.exe)so that that a prompt for the password 
is given, but this is undocumented AFAIK.

Otherwise, it is an unfortunate fact that a DOS console session is 
invoked whenever openSSH is used. For the average Windows user this is a 
scary occurrence, and is one of the obstacles that prevents wider casual 
take up of Git on Windows IMHO.

I understand that it comes down to a problem with communication between 
a dialogue and an SSH client via STDOUT. I believe Dscho might have some 
insight into this as it is a recurrent topic on the MsysGit tracker.

Steve