--username and --password everywhere?

Brian W. Fitzpatrick fitz at red-bean.com
Sun Dec 16 21:55:45 CST 2007


On Dec 16, 2007 9:51 PM, C. Michael Pilato <cmpilato at red-bean.com> wrote:
>
> Brian W. Fitzpatrick wrote:
> > Clearly I missed an email conversation somewhere, but I can't make
> > sense of why so many commands now take all these auth options, eg:
> >
> > add
> >
> > +  --parents                : add intermediate parents
> > +  --username ARG           : specify a username ARG
> > +  --password ARG           : specify a password ARG
> > +  --no-auth-cache          : do not cache authentication tokens
> > +  --non-interactive        : do no interactive prompting
> >
> > Can someone please take mercy on me and fill me in as to when svn add
> > needs auth?
>
> IIRC, folks got tired of the fact that wrapper scripts (such as our own test
> suite) had to constantly deal with the fact that some commands took those
> options and some didn't, and the ones that didn't would error when the
> options were provided.  In other words, you couldn't write a wrapper script
> like this which automatically tacks auth creds onto any 'svn' invocation:
>
>    #!/bin/sh
>    svn --username cmpilato --password mypassword --non-interactive $@
>
> You'd have to add some kind of logic to parse the requested subcommand and
> figure out if that subcommand accepted the auth-related options, etc.

You have got to be shitting me.  We added a whole bunch of useless UI
crap and cruft that does *nothing* to make writing *scripts* easier?

Oh. My. God.

I am embarassed for the Subversion community.

-Fitz




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