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Developer Guide (for third-party libmutton-based clients)

Important Notice: libmutton is in early development and is currently a moving target to develop off of. Feel free to jump in early, but greater change stability will be met with release v1.0.0. Check here for planned breaking changes.

libmutton was designed to be usable as a library for building other compatible password managers off of. MUTN is the official reference CLI password manager, however libmutton can be implemented in many other unique ways.

All functionality in the core and sync packages are designed to be used in other implementations.

If any functionality in these two packages proves to be difficult to implement in a third-party client, please open an issue so that it can be addressed.

Build Tags

Custom build tags can (and sometimes must) be used to achieve desired results.

These are as follows:

  • returnOnExit: If making an interactive interface (GUI/TUI/interactive CLI), you probably need to use this build tag. Without it, your entire program will exit after any given operation is completed. This behavior is only desired for non-interactive CLI implementations, such as MUTN. Currently, errors will result in the program exiting even with this build tag. This may be changed in the future (under evaluation).
  • wsl: Allows creating a Linux binary that can interact with the Windows clipboard (for WSL)
  • termux: Allows creating a Linux binary that can interact with the Termux clipboard (for Android)

Required Arguments

libmutton-based password manager clients should accept at least one specific required argument, as well as another recommended one:

  • clipclear: This argument is required for correct functionality. In order to clear the clipboard on a timer, libmutton-based password managers call another instance of their executable with the clipclear argument (e.g. mutn clipclear) with the intended clipboard contents provided via STDIN. If after 30 seconds the clipboard contents have not changed, they are cleared. Please accept a clipclear argument that is processed before the launch of any interactive interface. All this argument needs to do is call core.ClipClearArgument().
  • init: This argument is optional, but recommended for CLI interfaces. Some error messages request the user to use the init argument to fix configuration issues. If the argument does not exist, this may confuse the user.

Configuration

libmutton-based password manager clients should all share the same INI configuration file.

On UNIX-like systems, this is located at ~/.config/libmutton/libmutton.ini. On Windows, it is located at ~\AppData\Local\libmutton\config\libmutton.ini.

Base libmutton.ini Layout

The current base layout of libmutton.ini will change leading up to release v1.0.0. As of right now, the specification is as follows:

[LIBMUTTON]
gpgID = <gpg key id>
sshUser = <remote user>
sshIP = <remote ip>
sshPort = <remote ssh port>
sshKey = <ssh private key identity file path>
sshKeyProtected = <true/false>
sshEntryRoot = <remote entry root>
sshIsWindows = <true/false>

If creating a third-party client that requires extra configuration to be stored, please use the same file and create a new INI section for your application-specific configuration, e.g.:

[THIRD-PARTY-CLIENT-NAME]
configKey = <value>

This ensures that a user can use multiple client applications with the same configuration while avoiding conflicts.

Relevant Bugs Affecting Third-Party Client Implementations

  • Password-protected SSH identity files currently only prompt for password entry in the CLI, and thus they are not yet supported in GUI/TUI implementations