Bug#850802: Add s= as a command-line alias for url=https://
On Sat, Feb 04, 2017 at 08:16:03AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org> writes:
> > On Sat, Feb 04, 2017 at 02:46:46AM +0100, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
> >> Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org> (2017-01-10):
> >> > Package: preseed
> >> > Severity: wishlist
> >> > Tags: patch
> >> >
> >> > The attached patch adds s= as a command-line alias for url=https://
> >> >
> >> > url=example.org will assume "http://example.org";, but specifying an https:// URL
> >> > requires typing out url=https://example.org . Add an alias s= , mapping
> >> > to the template preseed/https_url, which assumes https:// instead; this
> >> > shortens the kernel command-line parameter to s=example.org .
> >>
> >> Just as a comment while going through my debian-boot/ folder: This seems
> >> too short/not descriptive enough to me.
> >
> > Do you mean the name "s"? "short" was the primary intent here, since
> > this serves as an alias; making it longer would defeat the purpose. I
> > intended 's' to stand for "secure" (and "seed").
> >
> > Do you have an alternate suggestion that you consider more evocative of
> > its purpose, without defeating that purpose?
>
> It strikes me as wrong to be introducing a new alias for this purpose.
>
> The problem you want fixed is that the magic expansion is defaulting to
> a protocol of http rather than https, so it seems to me that we need a
> way of making it use https instead, rather than setting up a parallel
> url thing that only deals with https.
>
> I think that we should make sure that we can at some point change the
> default protocol to be https, and still have a sensible result.
>
> The two approaches that occur to me is to have some sort of flags
> variable (debian-installer/flags) with an alias of flags, flg, or just f
> if you're desperate to be brief. Then a flag of 's' could make d-i
> prefer secure options where available. That way you'd just specify:
>
> f=s url=example.org
>
> Alternatively, we could allow the protocol to be specified, but leave
> the magic expansion in place if the : is not followed by a /, so that in
> that case you'd specify:
>
> url=https:example.org
>
> (I've not yet convinced myself that there are no problems with that idea
> though)
>
> That way we can decide to switch to defaulting to https for some future
> release, and then tell people to either do f=i (for insecure), or
> url=http:... to keep the old behaviour.
What about adding a new, shorter alias for url ("u=") that defaults to
https, but still supports http if explicitly specified as such? That
would allow switching the default sooner, but would also avoid having to
pass two separate options or an explicit scheme, and would avoid needing
a future flag day to change the default.
I'd be happy to submit a patch for that.
- Josh Triplett
Reply to: