Allowing alternative encryption backends

[Nicolas Graves]

Hey, sorry to push again, I really need this in order to switch back to
GnuPG at a later date -- without changing my config, hence the
requirements ; and ask for commit access on Guix.

I'm willing to do the work, I just want a guarantee and feeback that it
could be merged if the code is well-integrated.

Cheers,

Nicolas

On 2025-03-03 14:35, Nicolas Graves wrote:

> Hi pass!
>
> Bringing this conversation back to life!
>
> I'm very much in favor of bringing the option to add the possibility to
> handle Age in the password-store emacs package.  IMHO, it's very much in
> the emacs' modern spirit to make "peer-dependencies" work well together
> with minimal configuration options (consult/vertico/marginalia/embark
> approach) instead of forking entire packages to add 3/4 options.
>
> The following reasons make it mandatory in the long run IMHO:
> - The package passage.el is mostly a full fork of password-store.el
> - limited developper time / need to keep the fork updated and using
> modern emacs features. And deduplication of efforts too (contributions
> could be merged from both sides).
> - it's most likely possible to add 3/4 options without denaturing
> password-store.el at all, even for the unsupported web-of-trust feature
> - using options make it easier to switch and try instead of having
> duplicates (e.g. if a user has 30 lines of password-store keymaps and
> configuration, no need to s/password-store/passage/ just to try, which
> makes it quite convenient for emacs frameworks which would rather not
> duplicate pre-configuration either).
>
> Cons :
> - What if a user wants 2 distinct stores / authinfo ? Is that compatible?
>
> I made an unreviewed patch in this direction a while ago :
> https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/password-store/2022-October/004659.html
> A discussion followed on this subject but never converged in a decision.
>
> I'm proposing the following design:
>
> - port passage.el back in password-store.el
> - 3/4 configuration options should be enough to configure password-store
> with age instead of gpg
> - don't create an explicit dependency on age.el:
>   - when age.el is absent, work as expected/current
>   - but extend functionality when age.el is present (allow some
>   additional configuration options) 
> - for the web-of-trust functionality (not present in Age), simply return
> an error message when trying to use it "web-of-trust is not supported by
> Age backend".
>
> I'm willing to put in the work to bring that in password-store.el... if
> committers agree on the idea to port that in the package. The author of
> the package agrees on the objective :
> https://github.com/anticomputer/passage.el/issues/3
>
> Before starting to work on that, I would like some feedback and an
> upstream committer to agree to work with me (reviews) for extending
> password-store.el to support age.
>
> WDYT ? Feel free to also document the pros/cons and amend the design
> proposition if I forgot something.

-- 
Best regards,
Nicolas Graves