Re: bug#8050: Gnus does not connect to my IMAP server any more

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen, and
Michael Albinus wrote:
> Ted Zlatanov wrote:
>> I have two usability questions (cross-posting to the Gnus mailing list):

>> 1) should we have a global override to say "never add netrc entries", or
>> should the prompt be Y/N/y/n instead of just y-or-n-p, or should the
>> save question be asked only once per file, or something else?

SM> I used to always hit "y" to the question "remember the password", and
SM> now I simply always hit "n" to the question "save the password in
SM> .authinfo.gpg", so it's no worse than in Emacs-23.

SM> If hitting "n" once will remember not to prompt ever again, the only
SM> downside I can see is if someone later decides to change her mind, so we
SM> should have a simple way to say revert the decision in the future.
SM> Maybe the password prompt itself could somehow provide the ability to
SM> say "RET + save", tho it's more important for this feature to be easy to
SM> find than to be quick.

LMI> Hm...  if you look at how Firefox deals with this, it asks something
LMI> like "save password, don't save now, never save for this host", and I
LMI> think that's pretty nice, UX wise.  But there isn't a "never ask me
LMI> about saving passwords for any hosts ever again", I think?

I'll leave it as it is now so it will annoy people into actually saving
their passwords and it's not too annoying.  But I'll keep this in mind
and watch for complaints.

>> 2) should auth-source let-bind the password-cache timeout to something
>> larger?  The default is pretty short and for auth-source I think at
>> least 30 minutes are reasonable.  It could be a customizable integer.

SM> I'm not sure what this entails, but until now, Emacs has been caching my
SM> password for the whole session (typically several days) and
SM> I like that.  I would not want to have to re-enter my password every
SM> half hour.

MA> If auth-source documents its usage of `password-cache-expiry' properly,
MA> it shall be sufficient. I do not like packages, which overwrite my own
MA> settings :-)

LMI> I'd prefer a longer timeout than 30 minutes as the default.  Perhaps two
LMI> hours? 

The customization would be against `auth-source-cache-expiry', which
will always be let-bound into `password-cache-expiry'.  So it will not
overwrite `password-cache-expiry', it will ignore it.  I think that's
the right thing because we're not caching passwords.  See the change I
just pushed and tell me if you disagree with it.

>> I think this is fixed in the Gnus trunk as far as the auth-source
>> credentials go (Lars will have to fix the nnimap code failure on empty
>> credentials).

LMI> What's a good test case to tickle the bug?

Make `nnimap-credentials' return (nil nil).

Ted