[PATCH] dbus-spec: introduce new PERMIT_INTERACTIVE_AUTHENTICATION

[Thiago Macieira]

On Wednesday 03 September 2014 15:16:46 Marcel Holtmann wrote:
> Hi Thiago,
> 
> > How about removing the part about authentication and privileges, simply
> > make the flag indicate that the caller is ok with a lengthy operation
> > from the callee?
> 
> if the caller is okay with a lengthy operation it can just set the timeout
> to whatever it feels is appropriate.

It can and it should do that, as the text that Lennart proposed also says. But 
how does the callee know that the caller can wait for a long time?

The NO_REPLY flag is very similar, if the opposite: it notifies the callee that 
the caller is not expecting any reply, so the callee may as well not send 
anything.

> I am in favor of spelling things out clearly. That way the server knows
> exactly what the client intentions are. In this case, hey it is fine if you
> want to ask the user. If it is not set, then it tells the server that is
> should just reject the method call if it is has no sufficient
> authentication to execute it. Do not try to gain the extra authentication
> from anyone.

I just don't understand why this needs to be restricted to authentication. KDE 
does out-of-process dialogs all the time, even if the most notable one is the 
"type your password to open the wallet" dialog which relates to 
authentication.

The reason I'm asking to make this not specific to authentication is that I 
don't want to add another PERMIT_INTERACTIVE_xxx flag later just because it's 
not related to authentication (PERMIT_INTERACTIVE_COOKIE_HANDLING? 
PERMIT_INTERACTIVE_SAVE_DIALOG?)

> It is a good thing to have a clear meaning of the flag and what it is
> intended for. A generic flag is not helping the situation here.

We can state the goal the flag was created for and explain how it's used in 
conjunction with Polkit, but I don't think we should restrict it.

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
   Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center
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