Re: mail-source.el patch to use netrc-parse

[Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc>]

On Tue, Feb 05 2008, Ted Zlatanov wrote:

> The attached patch

Please use unified (or context) diffs.

> modifies mail-source.el to use a netrc (~/.authinfo) file for IMAP
> fetching.  It will be triggered when mail-source-authinfo-file is
> not nil.  It will override the :user and
> :password parameters set in mail-sources unconditionally.

Is it good to override it?  Wouldn't it be more natural if
`mail-source-authinfo-file' is used if no user/password is given in
`mail-sources'?

> This allows users to store their passwords for an IMAP mail source
> in the authinfo file, encrypted if necessary.  

I think this is useful.

> I use this for my IMAP fetching and it worked fine; please test
> (also if you don't use the feature, make sure your IMAP fetching
> works OK).  I won't commit until I get confirmations it works, since
> mail fetching is a sensitive area for improvements.
>
> I plan to add this to POP and webmail fetching as well, possibly through
> mail-source-bind instead of in each individual fetching function.
> Please let me know what you think.

I'm not sure if I understand what you have in mind.

> Also, I think instead of the current variables
>
> (setq
>  nnimap-authinfo-file "~/.authinfo.enc"
>  nntp-authinfo-file "~/.authinfo.enc"
>  mail-source-authinfo-file "~/.authinfo.enc"
>  smtpmail-auth-credentials "~/.authinfo.enc")
>
> Gnus should have a single specification:

`smtpmail.el', (pop3.el) and `mail-source.el' are not Gnus specific.
So it should be a general Emacs facility.  So please include
emacs-devel in further discussions.  As all ~/.authinfo parsing is
done via `netrc.el', it might make sense to define it therein?

> (setq
>  authinfo-files '(('nnimap "~/.imap-authinfo.enc")
>                   (t "~/.authinfo.enc")))

Maybe a simple value "~/.authinfo" should be equivalent
to '((t "~/.authinfo")).

> Then we can derive each of those variables at runtime, if they are not
> set:
>
> (setq nnimap-authinfo-file
>  (or nnimap-authinfo-file (gnus-get-authinfo-file 'nnimap)))
>
> WDYT?

Bye, Reiner.
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