gnome-keyring enhancement proposal

[Erik Grinaker <erikg wired-networks net>]

Hi

I'm the developer of Revelation, a password manager for GNOME 2. Lately
I've been getting alot of requests for integration with gnome-keyring,
which is natural as the two systems basically aim for the same thing (a
central store for account information). Revelation is available here:

http://oss.wired-networks.net/revelation/

Integrating Revelation with gnome-keyring can't really be done in a nice
way, the best would probably be to have functionality for importing from
/ exporting to gnome-keyring. But I think that what most people would
like is a mix of gnome-keyring and Revelation; a system where they could
easily manage their passwords, and also have applications use these
passwords automagically. To accomplish this, I feel that there needs to
be a few enhancements in gnome-keyring.

These proposals have not been fully thought through, but could be a
starting-point for further discussion (some of are inspired by comments
on FootNotes). If gnome-keyring could be a complete replacement for
Revelation, I would be very interested in working on it instead of
Revelation.


1. Ability to store accounts in a tree-structure, so they are easier to
organize. Revelation does this by letting you create "folders" which
accounts can be put in. This is very useful when one has a large number
of accounts.

2. Having various account types, with a set of fields for each (should
be extensible through XML schemas or something, so users or other apps
can add new account types).

3. Management of keys and certificates, for example ssh keys or
gpg/pgp/smime stuff.

4. Ability to run programs as other local users (starting a terminal as
root, for example).



-- 
Erik Grinaker <erikg wired-networks net>
http://erikg.wired-networks.net/

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of
life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be
enthusiastic about."
                                                      -- Albert Einstein