apg still very useful, please don't deprecate

[Sean DALY]

Hi Josh,

Alas, I lack the skill set to maintain software myself, and I also have
time constraints.

I will look into these alternatives, but a cursory evaluation indicates
that makepasswd lacks phonetic pronounceability, mkpwd provides it but
without sufficient mixing of random characters, passogva is old and
possibly not maintained upstream, pwgen provides secure pronounceability
possibly at apg's level, secpwgen may also suffice, and sf-pwgen seems to
offer either pronounceability or randomness but not both like apg.

One alternative would be to generate a couple of thousand passwords with
apg, store them in an encrypted container, and draw from there when I need
one for inspiration (I never use a generated password verbatim). I also
keep an older Mac around offline to run deprecated software which is still
useful. What I like about apg today is I have it in any of my terminals
when I need it.

thanks

Sean

On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:35 AM Joshua Root <jmr at macports.org> wrote:

> Sean DALY wrote:
> > So if it is possible to keep apg around, please do, I use it all the time
> > and it performs its job very well with no bugs I have ever encountered
>
> The danger is not that it will be removed just for being old, but that
> it will one day start failing to build with the latest developer tools
> (or the latest version of cracklib). Then someone will look at it, see
> that there is no upstream maintainer, and wonder if it's worth debugging
> the problem and then maintaining a patch set forever.
>
> The best way to prevent a port from being removed in those circumstances
> is to volunteer to do that repair and maintenance work on it.
>
> Do note that there are several other password generation utilities
> available through MacPorts; maybe one of them would serve your purposes.
> The ones I found with a quick search are: makepasswd, mkpwd, passogva,
> pwgen, secpwgen, sf-pwgen
>
> - Josh
>
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