User-Agent string, my patch and privacy concerns.

[Masklinn]

On 2 Apr 2008, at 18:20 , Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
>
> That's a reasonable idea.  I'm just worried if the current Mercurial
> users will find it similar to `phoning home' and complain loudly.
>
I don't think they will: pretty much every software that uses HTTP  
reports that kind of informations (e.g. Firefox' default User Agent  
string explicitly states that my OS is OS X 10.5, its Gecko's build  
number, and its own complete version number).

The informations Eric proposes to add don't go beyond that, and I  
think making the UAS completely configurable the way you suggest  
pretty much alleviates the issue for those who would care.

> Now, it's now the same as M$ programs phoning home and saying that you
> have so and so versions of so and so software.  It's half-way there  
> though.
>
Yes and no, it's the software reporting the platform configuration  
relevant to it in its UAS, seems pretty standard as far as HTTP  
clients (especially browsers) are concerned. For example, Lynx reports  
not only its own version but also the versions of libwww, SSL-MM and  
OpenSSL it was built with, the default Curl UAS reports even more  
(though there are people who care and don't like it, see http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=112555 
  ), etc...

I doubt most people will care or mind.