auth-source for new users (was: Gnus startup problems?)

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:28:23 +0100 Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote: 

LI> Antoine Levitt <antoine.levitt@gmail.com> writes:
>> It did - in authinfo. I answered "n" in order not to mess up my config,
>> and it prompted me for the password again when I opened a
>> folder. Presumably it could have saved it in memory, even if I didn't
>> write it in authinfo.

LI> Yes, it probably should have.  Ted?

(to anyone interested, we're talking about new users with no auth-source
setup, not those who have already set up an authinfo file as suggested
by the auth-source docs)

We're discussing this in an emacs bug thread.  I'm not sure what's the
right solution here.  There's valid scenarios for:

1) keeping the username+password in memory only (easy to implement!)

2) saving them to a keychain immediately

3) saving them to a netrc/authinfo file immediately

4) saving all credentials to a netrc/authinfo file later, keeping them
in memory now

I favor (4) but Stefan Monnier likes (2) and keychains in general, and
there seems to be no consensus on what's best.  So any opinions are
welcome.

Ted