Supporting NetHSM

[jans23]

Soon we will launch NetHSM which is a network appliance HSM containing a REST interface. Would you be interested to support NetHSM? Obviously it would require entirely different dependencies.

[robinkrahl]

That looks very interesting! The Nitrokey devices and the NetHSM don’t have any shared features, and NetHSM won’t be supported by libnitrokey, right? In this case, a separate application would probably be easier to maintain and to test. Though it would make sense to try to create a consistent UI for both tools (configuration, command structure, option and command names, etc.). From a user’s perspective, it doesn’t make a big difference whether I have to call `nitrocli nethsm ...` or, let’s say, `nethsmcli ...`, as long as we make sure that the UI is similar.

[jans23]

The Nitrokey devices and the NetHSM don’t have any shared features, and NetHSM won’t be supported by libnitrokey, right?

That's correct.

In this case, a separate application would probably be easier to maintain and to test.

You mean a separate application also packaged separately?

[robinkrahl]

You mean a separate application also packaged separately?

I think that’s up to Daniel. Both could work. In theory, both applications could also share some of the configuration and command-line parsing code, but off the top of my head, most of that code would be application-specific.

[d-e-s-o]

It could be an extension, mostly just to have it accessible under a unified UI. I would not consider it to belong into nitrocli core.