Any viable options for setting up a centralized auth client again?

[dbarnett]

gcalcli used to have a fairly simple auth setup using a centralized auth client ID, but that stopped working in ~2020 and was removed in #707, replaced with a self-service model described in docs/api-auth.md where each user has to generate their own one-off auth client and ID/secret.

Is there any way to change it back from the self-service model to the simpler setup? There doesn't seem to be any simple way, but let's keep an issue tracked here for reference and any follow-up in case options change.

See also: #692 collects historical info on how the auth has worked.

[dbarnett]

It has to be possible, one way or another, but AFAICT it'd have quota limitations if someone's not paying to keep the lights on, and also may be brittle to breaking for everyone if whoever owns it misses some scare notification from Google or something. Still a lot of people seem to keep asking for simpler setup, so I'm wondering if it could be some kind of best effort option to pass --client-id=GCALCLI and try the built-in client, but if it's having a bad week it could still point you back to (a) the self-service setup and (b) a link to donate + plead to get someone to unbreak a managed client again. =)