Should we keep ch-ssh?

[reidpr]

Charliecloud currently comes with a program called ch-ssh that facilitates SSH connections that transparently start a container. It is bind-mounted into containers if (1) /usr/bin/ch-ssh exists in the image and (2) --ch-ssh is specified to ch-run.

We are considering removing ch-ssh (#1379) because:

1. We’re not aware that it gets used much.
2. The interface is awkward (ch-run arguments go in an environment variable that’s parsed with rules different from the shell).

This poll is to help us understand whether it’s getting used and we just don’t know it. Please especially respond if you do use and would be sad if it went away — if there aren’t any responses in this category, we’ll probably remove it in 0.33. Please also write a comment if you think that would be helpful.

The replacement would likely be a FAQ entry; you can do the same thing by adding ch-run to your ssh command line manually.

[qwofford]

Can you provide an example use-case?

[reidpr]

The intended use case was that you’re on Node 1 in a Charliecloud container, and you want to SSH to Node 2 and land in an equivalent Charliecloud container without manually invoking ch-run.

[reidpr]

At present we have one vote and it’s “no”. If nothing changes within the next week or so, we’ll remove the feature.

[reidpr]

OK I think we have our answer. ch-ssh will be gone in 0.33.