Re: [Fab-user] I can't respond to prompts using Fabric "shell" or "run" verbs

[Jeff Forcier]

Yea, double check my original reply :) that's exactly what I thought you meant.

Niklas kind of threw the discussion off into a tangent which is
probably why you're confused ;)

These are two separate, but slightly related, issues:

* David: Detection of arbitrary prompting in executed commands and
"passing through" those prompts to the person running Fabric: not
implemented, but on the list.
* Niklas: Update of Fabric's own prompting mechanisms (i.e. asking the
user for variables and such) to allow for password-like hidden user
input: sort-of implemented, also on the list.

-Jeff

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 1:56 PM, Hancock, David (dhancock)
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Just a quick check to be sure my "desirement" is captured: I'd like to be
> able to run arbitrary shell scripts, usually not written by me, either via
> 'run' or 'shell' and have their shell-ish prompts displayed and the end-user
> entries captured and processed. Shell scripts can do some weird stuff to
> turn off echoing of password entries, which is OK, but most of the prompts
> and reads are visible. I'm not envisioning rewriting those third-party
> scripts at all.
>
> That said, I have NO CLUE how to go about that, so it remains just a desire
> that Fabric support arbitrary prompting from other programs. It seems
> important for a deployment tool to be able to use the scripts that install
> things we're deploying.
>
> Thanks for all that Fabric does already, and
> Cheers!
> --
> David Hancock | address@hidden
>
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>
> ________________________________
> From: Niklas Lindström <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:32:56 +0100
> To: Jeff Forcier <address@hidden>
> Cc: David Hancock <address@hidden>, <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: [Fab-user] I can't respond to prompts using Fabric "shell" or
> "run" verbs
>
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 4:55 PM, Jeff Forcier <address@hidden> wrote:
>> I think having a password-safe version of prompt() (either a separate
>> command or an argument to prompt() itself) would be a good idea and I
>> can't think of any obvious reason why it wouldn't work. The internal
>> password related prompts use getpass (at least, they did when I last
>> looked) and they work fine.
>
> I agree; I went with "naked" `getpass` and immediately wanted stuff
> like "re-type" etc. I think it'd be cleaner to have a separate
> operator for it (`password_prompt` is probably better than
> `secret_password` unless someone can think of actual usecases for a
> generic "secret value type").
>
> I do think adding a "password expansion" like "$(passwd:password)" or
> similar would be motivated by this, although it is an invasive change
> for the benifit of one sole operator.. And how it should work..
> Explicit `del` (as in my example), or perhaps dropping the value once
> used? I'm not sure..
>
>
>> I'll star this convo in my GMail and will make sure this gets added to
>> the TODO list sometime =)
>
> I do that too. ;) I really recommend the "superstars" Lab feature for
> that.. (What to recommend for actually taking time to implement my
> ideas is another task.. Perhaps Philip J Eby's "Owners' Circle".. ;) )
>
>
> Best regards,
> Niklas
>
>
>> -Jeff
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Niklas Lindström <address@hidden>
>> wrote:
>>> Hm. Of course, I can just *use* getpass here, although I loose some of
>>> the `prompt` features. Remaining then is whether some secret expansion
>>> is still desirable (the solution of which may or may not make the
>>> usecase of `secret_prompt` interesting again)..
>>
>