Let an installation seed and lock user settings

The first two thirds of #207. A school wanting "warn about outside senders"
on for three thousand pupils cannot ask three thousand pupils, and the
reporter is right that this is a company policy rather than a preference.

Two powers, and the difference between them is the whole request. `defaults`
seed an account that has never had settings of its own and can be changed
afterwards like anything else -- a starting point, not a rule. `enforced` are
reapplied on every load and cannot be changed at all.

Enforced controls stay visible and go dead, with a line saying why. The issue
asked for that by name: a control that is simply missing reads as a bug to
somebody who has used ihasmail without a policy.

The lock is in the settings store rather than only on the controls. There is
one door -- `update` -- and putting it there means an imported settings file,
a settings file synced from a device that predates the policy, and a control
somebody adds later and forgets to check are all covered by construction.
Reset goes back to the installation's answer rather than to ihasmail's, so it
cannot be a way around a policy either.

Configured by environment variable or by a file, because ihasmail's own
production runs read-only with no volume: an installation that cannot mount a
file can still set a variable. Keys this build does not have are dropped, the
same rule an imported settings file already gets -- a policy written against a
newer ihasmail must not put a setting nothing reads into everybody's synced
settings file. Malformed JSON stops the server rather than quietly doing
nothing, since a policy that silently did not apply is indistinguishable from
the feature not working.

Tier three -- enforcing a setting once while still letting readers change it
afterwards -- is not here. It needs a decision the reporter and I have not
made yet, and it is the only part that stores anything new.

Refs #207.
This commit is contained in:
2026-09-02 10:49:55 -07:00
parent a01e1874d8
commit 457ea53ca3
22 changed files with 396 additions and 45 deletions
+3
View File
@@ -175,6 +175,9 @@ export function createApp(basePath = config.basePath): Hono<Env> {
sourceUrl: config.sourceUrl,
imageProxy: config.imageProxy,
maxUploadBytes: config.maxUploadBytes,
/* Sent before sign-in like the rest of this: it says what the
installation has decided, not anything about who is asking. */
settingsPolicy: config.settingsPolicy,
}),
);
+47
View File
@@ -111,9 +111,56 @@ export function assertImmutable(sessionFile: string, root: string): void {
if (immutable) assertImmutable(sessionFile, fileURLToPath(new URL("../..", import.meta.url)));
/**
* Settings an installation decides, rather than each reader.
*
* A school turning on "warn about outside senders" for three thousand pupils
* cannot ask three thousand pupils to turn it on -- issue #207. Two sections,
* which are two different powers:
*
* - `defaults` seed an account that has never had settings of its own. The
* reader can change any of them afterwards; they are a starting point, not a
* rule.
* - `enforced` are applied on every load and cannot be changed here at all. The
* controls stay visible and go dead, which the issue asked for by name: a
* missing control confuses somebody who has used ihasmail elsewhere.
*
* Read from a file or straight from the environment, because ihasmail's own
* production runs read-only with no volume -- an installation that cannot mount
* a file can still set a variable.
*/
function readSettingsPolicy(): { defaults: Record<string, unknown>; enforced: Record<string, unknown> } {
const parse = (raw: string, where: string): Record<string, unknown> => {
try {
const v = JSON.parse(raw) as unknown;
if (!v || typeof v !== "object" || Array.isArray(v)) throw new Error("not a JSON object");
return v as Record<string, unknown>;
} catch (err) {
/* Loud, and fatal. A policy that silently did not apply would look like
the feature not working, and the admin would have no way to tell. */
throw new Error(`Invalid ${where}: ${(err as Error).message}`);
}
};
const file = process.env.SETTINGS_POLICY_FILE;
if (file) {
if (!existsSync(file)) throw new Error(`SETTINGS_POLICY_FILE does not exist: ${file}`);
const whole = parse(readFileSync(file, "utf8"), `SETTINGS_POLICY_FILE (${file})`);
return {
defaults: (whole.defaults as Record<string, unknown>) ?? {},
enforced: (whole.enforced as Record<string, unknown>) ?? {},
};
}
return {
defaults: process.env.SETTINGS_DEFAULTS ? parse(process.env.SETTINGS_DEFAULTS, "SETTINGS_DEFAULTS") : {},
enforced: process.env.SETTINGS_ENFORCED ? parse(process.env.SETTINGS_ENFORCED, "SETTINGS_ENFORCED") : {},
};
}
export const config = {
isProd,
appName: env("APP_NAME", "ihasmail"),
settingsPolicy: readSettingsPolicy(),
/**
* What this build calls itself: `2.16.57`. Set by the image build from
* `--build-arg IHASMAIL_VERSION`, since `.dockerignore` keeps `.git` out of