[sword-devel] SFTP Support

[Greg Hellings]

Troy,

I've trawled through the curl header files and have found no mechanism
to determine if SSH is enabled for a build with it already enabled.
The libcurl docs I've read have said, regarding the ambiguous message
Peter received (stating that support is "either" disabled or
unavailable) that there is no way to determine if this message results
from libcurl not supporting a protocol or from it being disabled at
libcurl's compile time.

Taking that together, unless someone on Debian can locate a variable
in curl header file indicating SSH_SUPPORT_DISABLED or something
equivalent then I would say there is no way to positively determine at
compile time if SFTP support should be included. So it would seem like
we can't do any better than this patch unless we actually attempt to
compile and run a sample file against libcurl that connects out to
SFTP. But I know relying on this is terrible for cross-compiling and
lots of build systems are setup to disallow network traffic, so this
method may not be very robust.

On a related note, I have a colleague who is actively pursuing
resolution of the outstanding Debian issues to enable libssh2 to be
admitted to Debian's "main" repository, which is the blocking bug
preventing the Debian-family of distros from having SFTP support in
libcurl. So hopefully that issue is resolved in that universe soon.

Unless new details come up, it seems we will either have to just leave
out SFTP support for being unable to determine its availability or let
libcurl fail in its own ways if it lacks it and blindly pass off
control to it. You'll have to make a determination of which one you
prefer.

There are other architectural changes to the way InstallMgr works that
could also be added to enhance the user experience - allowing them to
specify a public key instead of a password (libcurl defaults to
looking at ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub when traversing SFTP which is a problem
for us DSA key users or anyone storing their key in a non-standard
location) and/or not storing passwords in plaintext in InstallMgr.conf
which are outside of the purview of this patch.

--Greg

On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 1:23 PM, Troy A. Griffitts <scribe at crosswire.org> wrote:
> So guys.  What's the status on this one?  Last I heard, we might want to add
> libcurl ssh detection to prevent a flurry of support emails.  Should I
> commit as-is, or would you like more time to experiment with and add
> detection?
>
> Troy
>
>
> On 12/19/2012 05:07 AM, Greg Hellings wrote:
>
> If this gets approved and submitted, then yes. Otherwise, there is no point.
>
> --Greg
>
> On Dec 19, 2012 4:12 AM, "David Haslam" <dfhmch at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> A summary of SFTP module installation would be a useful addition to the
>> wiki.
>>
>> Please would one of you condense the details and post a suitable section
>> the
>> most relevant wiki page.
>>
>> /Thanks/.
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> View this message in context:
>> http://sword-dev.350566.n4.nabble.com/SFTP-Support-tp4651358p4651440.html
>> Sent from the SWORD Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
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