I read through the documentation at #1432898: XC Authentication on XC Authentication. I maintain the LDAP module and see some promise in the design. First, in solving the multiple authentication methods problem. Second from abstracting the authentication functions from the drupal workflow; much of upgrading is figuring out how an authentication methods fit into the hooks and workflow of a new drupal version. Much of this work is repeated over several authn modules with the same workflow. There is also duplication of storage mechanisms and user interfaces that store the same data, but have different wording depending on type of authn. I've done some work in this area of authorization, abstracting authorization targets (drupal roles, og groups etc) from authorization sources (ldap) and mappings in the ldap project. Really ends up saving alot of work and more reliable code. (see http://www.gliffy.com/publish/2384881/)

My questions are:
1) Does XC Authentication need to depend on XC_util and be buried in this package? Could it be in a package called multiauthn or some such that maybe had XC_util as a dependency? I think this is a drawback for adoption and, thus, long term maintenance and viability.
2) How much funding and momentum do you have for XC Authentication?

Comments

mtwesley’s picture

mtwesley commented

John,

Sorry for the late reply and thanks for your interest in the XC Authentication module.

I'm interested in this, but would like to have a better understanding of summary. Some of it is a bit ambiguous, so I don't want to read it incorrectly. From what I've read, you like many of the concepts in the xc_auth module, particularly its design and the problems with authentication that it intends to solve, and you are interested in providing a better and/or more useful module for the entire Drupal community; moreover, a module that is possibly independent of the XC bundle. Am I correct?

I'll also try to answer your questions the best I can right now, but I hope to also hear back from you about your thoughts and also to get a better understanding of what you are trying to do and how we can help, if possible.

1: Yes, the xc_auth module could perhaps function without xc_util. There are a similar modules in the XC bundle (such as the oaiharvester) that are independent modules. Whether xc_auth can be the same, I'm not exactly sure yet, but it would be a good discussion to have.

2: Yes, our funding and momentum is related to the XC project as a whole, so we are working on the xc_auth module. The xc_auth module is an important part of that, however, as you probably notice, we may not necessarily be seeking to build the most advanced multiple authentication module right now.

MT

Ozzie’s picture

Ozzie commented

subscribed