Created attachment 294846 [details] [review]
Patch to use secrets service for printer auth_info

Hi,

This is a follow up on BUG 674264 which fixed the issue for GTK 3 by allowing GTK to look up credentials for print job authentication from a secrets service (mainly gnome-keyring).

Attached you'll find the Patch for GTK 2 (Including the fix for BUG 740612)
it is the same code as used in GTK 3 with some adjustments to whitespace / formatting to apply to GTK 2.

The last statement in BUG 674264 from Marek Kašík with regards to GTK 2 inclusion was:

> From the coding point of view, it is possible. But since I consider gtk2 as a
> super-stable release, I'm not sure whether we should introduce this feature
> there.

Now after some months of testing this fix I'd like to discuss that again. Here is why I think it would be good for users if this was applied in GTK2:

1. This fix got some testing with GTK 3 in various distributions and so far I am not aware of any regressions caused by this.
We've also deployed this fix in a large deployment on various distributions for GTK 2 and GTK 3 and so far no problems arose with it.

(Packages are available here: 
http://apt.intevation.org/dists/wheezy/printer-auth/
http://apt.intevation.org/dists/trusty/printer-auth/
ftp://ftp.intevation.de/local/gtk-print-auth/FC19/
)

2. This fix is necessary to work smoothly together with system-config-printer for print job authentication. Before the original introduction of the auth-info handling in BUG 566522 it was possible just to have system-config-printer handle authentication. In the current state GTK2 pops up the auth_info dialog for each print job even if system-config-printer could authenticate the job automatically using credentials from gnome-keyring.

One could argue that:
  a) This fixes a regression in the desktop behavior for printer auth
     introduced with the fix for 566522.
  b) It is necessary to update GTK2 to adapt to the improved handling in
     system-config-printer print job authentication. (See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=999297 )

3. The code changes should affect only users that use CUPS with samba printers that require auth_info. With little regression risk to other parts of the printing code. But those users (albeit mainly institutional) are largely affected.
Imagine a mixed Windows / Linux deployment where users have to authenticate each print job (e.g. for Billing) on Windows they can just save it (well with system-config-printer-applet they can also do this under Linux).
But under Gnome they have to enter the credentials for various printers again and again each time they want to print something.

4. With regards to the importance of having this only fixed in GTK 3. To be honest, as long as firefox still uses GTK 2 in most distributions this fix is more important for our users to have in GTK 2 then it is in GTK 3 :-/


So that's my argument. Sorry for the long message but this is quite important to us as it would save us from having to maintain patched GTK 2 packages in the future ;-)

Please let me know if there are any changes I could make to the patch to increase the chance to get it accepted in GTK 2.

Regards,
Andre