Re: .authinfo and mail sources

[John Prevost <prevost@maya.com>]

Simon Josefsson <jas@pdc.kth.se> writes:

> John Prevost <prevost@maya.com> writes:
> 
> > Is there any reason mail sources don't seem to use .authinfo, or is
> > this just an oversight?
> 
> The .netrc format only support one protocol, the original being ftp
> and it's nntp in .authinfo. So if the same machine ran nntp/pop/imap
> services, there is no obvious way of specifying different passwords.
> 
> Perhaps we could further enhance the syntax of netrc files in
> .authinfo, perhaps add a keyword `port' to specify which port we're
> talking about?  As one couldn't run multiple services on a single
> port, that might work.
> 
> Are there any other standardized password credential file formats
> around?

Hmm.  Well, nnimap already uses the authinfo file just fine.  (In
fact, the password is the same all around on that machine.)  The thing
that confuses me is that the mail-source code for imap doesn't even
try to use the password in this file.

I think we should probably extend .authinfo.  Maybe not port, but
protocol (which could allow for "imap" working for either normal or
SSL imap, or imap on a weird port, or ...  Or something like that.
That might not be quite right either.  Hmm.

John.