[Assword] Proposal for an extensible command line syntax

[Jameson Graef Rollins]

On Thu, Oct 24 2013, Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg at fifthhorseman.net> wrote:
>> Hey, folks.  Just to throw in my 2 cents here:
>> 
>> ASSWORD_PASSWORD=prompt assword add <context>
>> 
>> already allows users to replace a password for a given context.  Is
>> there something a new command would provide that I'm not seeing?
>
> hm, i just tested and you are indeed right.  I'm not sure that's a good
> situation.  i would be really bummed if i automated an attempt to "add"
> a new password and it ended up deleting the old password.   I'd say that
> "assword add" should fail if the context already exists.

That's reasonable.  Should we then add a "--force" option or the like to
add to tell it to write over an existing entry?  Or should we make a
whole separate subcommand?

>> If we want to improve the situation, I think allowing changing the
>> password from the gui would be better.
>
> do you mean direct editing, or replacing with a new randomly generated
> password?  what would that UI look like?

I'm not sure what the UI would look like, but by far the thing I have to
do most frequently is replace the auto-generate password with some
alternate, less secure one to meet the stupid needs of some web site.  I
have to do this all the time, probably more times than not.

The problem is that different sites have different inane requirements,
such as "the password must not be longer than 8 characters".  Other than
being able to actually edit the generated password or manually type in a
new one, I don't think there's a single catch-all interface that would
work.

jamie.
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