[redirecting to python-ideas] On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I would like to propose a small change in the getpass module so it's able to get passwords from keyrings (like KWallet, Keychain, etc)
The idea is to provide a getpass.cfg configuration file where people can provide the name of a function to use when getpass is called. Then third-party projects can implement this function. For example the Python Keyring library.[1] could be installed and configured to be used by people that wants getpass calls to be handled by this tool.
That's a backward compatible change, and it avoids adding any new module in the stdlib. Plus, it offers a greatly improved getpass module with no risks for the stdlib stability : it becomes a reference implementation with an interface for third-party implementers.
A prototype is here : http://bitbucket.org/tarek/getpass/ (work in progress but you can get the idea)
Don't you usually have to tell the keyring which password to retrieve? The signature for getpass() doesn't have enough info for that. I'm not sure that not adding a new module to the stdlib is a sufficient reason to foist the new semantics on an old function. -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)