By indicating the password hashing algorithm, users of bitcoin distributions without the script in share/rpcauth and users who don't want to rely on said script can use alternative means to generate the password hash.
Question for reviewers: perhaps we should also indicate that it is specifically a HMAC-SHA-256 of the UTF-8 encoding of their password?
529 | @@ -530,7 +530,7 @@ option can be specified multiple times 530 | .HP 531 | \fB\-rpcauth=\fR<userpw> 532 | .IP 533 | -Username and hashed password for JSON\-RPC connections. The field 534 | +Username and HMAC-SHA-256 hashed password for JSON\-RPC connections. The field
No need to modify these files., they are autogenerated.
Oh? If they're autogenerated then why are they version controlled?
Fixed.
utACK
Question for reviewers: perhaps we should also indicate that it is specifically a HMAC-SHA-256 of the UTF-8 encoding of their password?
Maybe in some more detailed spec document, but I don't think the option help is a place to go into such detail. It's consistent with the use of UTF-8 throughout the entire application. Mentioning it for the specific option might make people think "then where should I not use UTF-8?".
<!--e57a25ab6845829454e8d69fc972939a-->
The following sections might be updated with supplementary metadata relevant to reviewers and maintainers.
<!--174a7506f384e20aa4161008e828411d-->
Reviewers, this pull request conflicts with the following ones:
If you consider this pull request important, please also help to review the conflicting pull requests. Ideally, start with the one that should be merged first.
utACK dcb70b152292a8df9fe834bacdf231ea848819b1. Could add doc: or [doc] prefix to PR description to indicate this a documentation-only change.
utACK dcb70b1