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Re: Agent protocol



Simon Tatham wrote:

    byte      SSH_AGENT_EXTENSION
    string    extension id
    ... extension-specific data follows ...

`extension id' will of course be allocated in the same way all other
SSH string ids are done: anything with an @ in it belongs to the
owner of the domain after the @. That way, I can safely invent
extensions to the agent protocol in a namespace I can be sure nobody
else will attempt to re-use for other purposes.

My vision of this message type is that it can be sent from client to
agent _or_ from agent to client, depending on the extension. An
agent should not be the first to send it, so a client can rely on
not seeing strange unexpected extension messages in response to its
requests; but if the client sends an extension message, the agent
might need to respond with other extension messages if no existing
response message is appropriate.

I strongly support an extension mechanism along such lines. We have generic extension mechanisms in place thoughout the protocol, so why not here?

-d




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