[SAGA-RG] Context attributes

[Ceriel Jacobs]

Andre Merzky wrote:

> Again: saga::context instance is not supposed to allow the
> user to create a credential on API level, or to manage it,
> etc - it is solely supposed to _point_ to an existing
> credential, and to deliver additional information about it,
> if available (such as lifetime).
> 
> So, there is no reason not to allow the implementation to
> attach additional information, or state attributes, or
> whatever to the context internally.  In fact, the
> implementation may need to do credential management - and
> these actions are not expressed at API level at all.

There recently was an issue with the JavaGAT implementation,
see https://mail.cct.lsu.edu/mailman/private/gat-devel/2008-December/001234.html,
where an application has a GSSCredential object and needs to use
that object for authentication to a GRAM. Currently, there is no
way in SAGA to deal with this situation. A SAGA context extends
SAGA attributes, and attributes only deal with strings. So, I guess
that even allowing only string-string attributes in the API can
already be a problem.

Ceriel