[Yum-devel] enable yum to pass http data to repository

[Bryan Mills]

Scott Russell wrote:

> Gotta chime in here and say that I would love to see userid and 
> password config options for yum repos. That said, the above while it 
> works is less than ideal. The idea of storing a password in the yum 
> config file isn't the best practice.
>
I tend to agree.  I'll brainstorm a bit.  I can only think of two basic 
ways you might authenticate against a repository:
1) http authentication
2) http post or get variables

In both cases you have the need to pass at most three variables 
(username,password,domain).  So what if you could set the following 
config parameters.

[testrepo]
name=Test Repository
baseurl=http://foo/bar
authentication=http_post
username=bryan
http_var_username=my_username_field_name
http_var_password=my_password_field_name

HTTP authentication would be similar but you wouldn't need 
http_var_username/password.

Then as a user you could either put the password in the config file or 
yum could prompt you for it.  Of course this doesn't work for mirror 
lists (just a single base url).

Thoughts?

-bryan