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Comment by Evidlo | Hacker News Reader

The KeePass format has been around for years. I don't really understand why people keep using pass, or why it bills itself as the "standard" Unix password manager.

There are also already command line KeePass utilities, like passhole [0] (mine) and keepassxc-cli.

[0]: https://github.com/evidlo/passhole [1]: https://keepassxc.org/docs/KeePassXC_UserGuide.html

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Any program that is GUI first (like keepass) cannot be the standard UNIX password manager. Furthermore, `pass` fits nicely into the philosophy of small reusable components. It is a small amount of shell scripting wrapped around two other commonly used tools: Git and GPG.

What's the percentage of end-user Unix systems with X installed?

What's the percentage of end-user Unix systems with Git installed?

What's the percentage of KeePass stores that can be used without X?

What's the percentage of pass stores that can be used without Git?

1. Without knowing exactly what counts as an "end-user", 15%. This is low for two reasons, 1) because I can SSH into a plethora of non-graphical systems, which I assume are the majority; and 2) just to be difficult and pedantic with the new Wayland systems for example.

2. Should be like 95% ;)

3. Without ever having used KeePass, I'm quite confident of the answer to this one... 100%. Is it officially supported and easy though?

4. Also 100%! But not happily.

Sorry, without some additional context I can't really give you satisfying answers I fear.

> Any program that is GUI first (like keepass) cannot be the standard UNIX password manager.

Why is that? Unix != lack of UI (NeXT, Solaris, any Unix descendant with a port of CDE), and being GUI first doesn't matter if there is good CLI support.

>why it bills itself as the "standard" Unix password manager

It's a smallish (<1k loc) wrapper script around GPG, a tool basically omnipresent, and passwords are saved in an hierarchy as regular files. Essentially it integrates well in the existent ecosystem and is easy to extend.

I think one would have a hard time getting a utility with the name "passhole" accepted into any large organization's toolset.

OK AdmiralAsshat >.<

The Admiral's wisdom comes from experience.

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