make it possible to use Digest-based authentication

[paul@…]

currently, I believe that users are forced to drop back from htdigest to htpasswd due to the following issue. This is a significant inconvenience, especially when many users have entered their passwords in the digest file and when multiple projects are involved.

The following is from ​http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/XmlRpcPlugin...

Problems with Digest HTTP authentication

The xmlrpclib.ServerProxy client - as demonstrated in the following examples - will not work with a Digest-based HTTP authentication: you need to set up a Basic HTTP authentication on server side to make the examples work.

If you use the standalone Trac daemon, this means that you cannot use the tracd -a option (htdigest authentication file). Use trac --basic-auth (htpasswd authentication file) instead.

[Alec Thomas]

It's not clear to me what this has to do with XmlRpcPlugin. This is a limitation of the Python XML-RPC client.

[paul@…]

ok, I see. thanks for the quick response!

it seems like Python has libraries that would support digest authentication (e.g.,

​http://docs.python.org/lib/module-hashlib.html)

also, it seems like there are several people (mostly doing grid computing) with digest authentication in Python xmlrpc clients. I will ping a couple of them in case it might make sense for users of xmlrpcplugin to use an alternative client that can do digest authentication.