[darcs-users] signing of patches

[Jorgen Schaefer]

Hi there!
I was just talking with an arch user, and the only thing he misses
in darcs (after telling him that the rest of the stuff he wants is
already there) is the "signed archive".

A signed arch archive is a local copy of a repository that is
"signed" by someone you trust. If you pull in patchsets that are
not signed, or if a file does not have the right checksum, arch
goes bananas and tells the user that all hell is lose because the
archive was corrupted. Additionally, one can create a "re-signing
mirror". People commit their signed patchsets to a central
repository, and the mirror gets patchsets from there, checking the
signature, but re-signing it with a new key. Good for a public
repository where you want only one public signing key.

Applied to darcs, I would propose the following additions:

record --sign  Sign the patch you are recording. The key could be
               set in your prefs, or as an additional parameter.
pull           If the appropriate flag in prefs is set, check the
               signature of patches. Warn if there is no
               signature, die if it doesn't verify.
pull --resign  The same as pull above, but resign it with a key
               specified in prefs. (This enables the "re-signing
               mirror" mentioned above)

This might require a change in the patch format, sadly.

Any comments?

Greetings,
        -- Jorgen

P.S. My Haskell knowledge is non-existent, so don't expect patches
from me :)

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