Bikeshed: "context" parameter for signatures

I missed an issue that had been filed (but not tagged) prior to the publication of signatures-12, and it asks a pretty simple question:

We added a “context” parameter to allow applications to put a specific string that the application can recognize into the signature parameter set, so that (for example) an authz protocol can declare that a specific value be used or a cloud deployment can have all of its proxies use the same value. However, the term “context” is used in other ways in the spec, so it’s not the best term to use for this new parameter. The proposal is to change “context” to “application” or even the shorter “app”:

https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/2249



I’d like to do a quick bike shed on this parameter name here, for anyone who has an opinion. Since it’s newer, existing libraries mostly don’t have it supported yet so if we’re going to change it we should change it right now.


Thanks,
 — Justin

Received on Thursday, 22 September 2022 14:40:48 UTC