rfc for notmuch remote access script

[Jani Nikula]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2016, David Bremner <david at tethera.net> wrote:
> Jani Nikula <jani at nikula.org> writes:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 8:25 PM, Tomi Ollila <domo141 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> j4ni on irc expressed interest of having an installation option for
>>> notmuch-emacs and a notmuch remote access script as 'notmuch'
>>>
>>> This got me thinking what kind of script would fulfill all the needs
>>> that I know of.
>>
>> This here fulfills all of my needs:
>>
>> #!/bin/bash
>> printf -v ARGS "%q " "$@"
>> exec ssh notmuch notmuch ${ARGS}
>>
>> Keep it simple, I say. The user can (and must) configure all the ssh
>> stuff in ~/.ssh/config under "Host notmuch". If there is something
>> non-trivial the user must do, taking a trivial script and editing it
>> is usually *much* easier than trying to understand a complicated
>> script and making that work using environment variables etc. that need
>> to be set somewhere.
>
> I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but then I don't really understand your
> desire to have wish (I thought) to have notmuch install this script?

I'd like to be able to install a "notmuch-remote" setup: the notmuch
remote script, possibly bash completion, and notmuch-emacs. Basically
everything that's required on notmuch side for the complete working
notmuch remote setup. And specifically excluding notmuch binaries. Of
course, you'll still need to set up ssh to host "notmuch" and notmuch
binaries on that host.

Tomi's general approach seems to be to add a bunch of environment
variables in the remote access script so you don't have to touch
~/.ssh/config. Instead, you need to make sure you have all of these
environment variables correctly set up, both in shell and in your emacs
session. And to do that, you'll need to either read the script or read a
bunch of documentation (that someone will have to write).

Personally, I prefer a simple script that assumes a certain type of ssh
client configuration. We can typically reference documentation written
by others how to do that, and just say "put that stuff under a Host
notmuch section in ~/.ssh/config".

So I'd like notmuch remote installation that tells the user to set up
ssh, instead of telling the user to copy a script somewhere in $PATH,
and hack that up along with making compatible changes in ssh config.

> Do you typically have notmuch install into your home directory?

No. Please explain the relevance of this question.


BR,
Jani.