auth-source multiple accounts (was: can emacs use the mac os x keychain?)

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:47:30 +0100 Uday S Reddy <uDOTsDOTreddy@cs.bham.ac.uk> wrote: 

USR> Ted Zlatanov wrote:
USR> Another question that I always wondered about.  Does auth-source allow
USR> for multiple logins on the same server/protocol combination?
>> 
>> Not currently.  The first one found is picked IIRC.  I think it would
>> make the UI significantly more complex to allow multiples and perhaps
>> confuse users.  The advanced users that need that can typically use
>> aliases for the server name.  Do you see a need for it?

USR> Yes, I think it is needed.
...
USR> I am not sure what you mean by UI getting complex.  The only user
USR> interaction seems to be to ask for a passphrase.  (There is a problem
USR> at the moment because it doesn't say passphrase for which auth-source.
USR> So, if somebody happens to use multiple auth-sources with different
USR> passphrases, they would be in trouble!)

The passphrase query is actually from EPG/EPA I think (you're referring
to the decoding of the .gpg file, right?) so it's outside of
auth-source.  The other source type is the Secrets API which requests
the passphrase externally as well.  auth-source currently does not
interact with the user.

Maybe it's better to use auth-source-pick parameters, something like
(account "my-account-1") coupled with "account my-account-1" in the
netrc file.  In Gnus we can do it since each server entry has its own
name which can be separate from the actual server address.  Will that
work in VM, giving a logical name to each account?  See auth-source-pick
and auth-source-user-or-password for the details; the query data format
is pretty simple thanks to Michael Albinus' help recently.

Ted