[Authentication] Secrets API timeline and design

[Michael Leupold]

Mike Mammarella wrote:
> I'm working on getting Chromium to integrate better with desktop
> environments and one part of that is storing form passwords in the
> environment's password store. We want to avoid depending on specific
> libraries like GNOME Keyring and KWallet, in case users don't have
> them installed, and the DBus Secrets API looks like it's the
> up-and-coming solution to this (and the more general problem of
> supporting multiple desktop environments).

That's great to hear!

> I noticed a commit about four days ago that contains the beginning of
> a DBus service which would implement the proposed API specification;
> how quickly might this be complete? Is the plan for it to be
> implemented by each possible backend (Keyring, KWallet, etc.) or is
> the idea for there to be a single implementation for all desktop
> environments? Will there be a client library to access it (e.g. as
> suggested in
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/authentication/2009-
August/000071.html),
> or will applications use DBus directly to communicate with the service?

While I aim for using keyring and its implementation of the secrets service 
for KDE it's not completely decided yet. In my opinion the spec should make 
different service implementations possible - and that shouldn't be that much 
overhead. Of course this has to be transparent so that client libraries 
won't have to bother with it.

A first release of the specification is meant to be done when at least one 
service implementation is ready.

The service is meant to be accessed using client libraries though nothing 
will keep anyone from using DBus directly. Stef will be working on a GLib 
client library for GNOME and I'll be doing its Qt/KDE counterpart. I am 
currently not aware of any other bindings being planned (though I hope some 
will sprout).

For a current state of the GNOME implementation, check this current post on 
the gnome-keyring mailinglist:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-keyring-list/2009-August/msg00004.html

Kind regards,
Michael