Subject: Re: bug#63383: [PATCH 0/4] Various PAM improvements

From: Felix Lechner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2023 11:21:52 -0700

Hi Ludo'

On Tue, Aug 15, 2023 at 1:19 PM Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> I’m dropping the patch that adds more absolute
> file names for all modules shipped with ‘linux-pam’ but keeping the rest.

Thanks for doing that. It was the right thing to do.

> Hmm are you suggesting a PAM rewrite in Guile?

Thanks for asking! I rewrote PAM in Guile some time ago [1] but it
still uses a shared library to start Guile via the good old "tortoise"
interface. [2] Upon reflection, I am not sure it would shelter us from
all potential compatibility issues on upgrades, including upgrades of
Guile.

Perhaps it would be best for Guix to adopt a fully script-driven
approach similar to OpenBSD. [3] Maxim may have alluded to it in a
correspondence on this topic elsewhere.

Kind regards
Felix

[1] https://codeberg.org/lechner/guile-pam
[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/docs/guile-tut/tutorial.html#Tortoise
[3] https://blog.lambda.cx/posts/how-bsd-authentication-works/