Re: SFTP version negotiation

[nisse%lysator.liu.se@localhost (Niels Möller)]

Joseph Galbraith <galb-list%vandyke.com@localhost> writes:

> This unfortunate situation is mostly my fault... because
> it has taken so long to finish the spec, we have
> implementations that are well entrenched at version 3.

The situation is somewhat unfortunate, but I do *not* think we have a
sufficient motivation for introducing a new version negotiating
mechanism in the spec.

Implementations that want to support version 3 and 6, but no version
in between, can do that in several ways; an explicit command line
option, or the "try version 6, if the server supports only 4 or five,
disconnect and try again with 3".

That's a little kludgy, true. But if we have to choose between

  1. Kludges in the implementations, which will live only until
     version 6 is sufficiently widespread that version 3 support can
     be dropped (I think all serious sftp implementations should get
     version 6 support within a year, or at most, say, three years),

  2. Kludges in the spec, which will live forever and affect every
     implementation that is ever written,

I'll choose 1 every time. Please.

/Niels