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Have you done any research about how well different web clients support name constraints? I know that Chrome only recently started respecting Name Constraint on root CAs [1]. The BetterTLS project tracks a bunch of related concerns, but oddly missed this one [2]. I'm wary of this approach since I don't know if the various software I use will enforce it.
1. https://alexsci.com/blog/name-non-constraint/
2. https://github.com/Netflix/bettertls/issues/19
https://github.com/openwrt/luci/blob/master/applications/luc...
https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/tutorials/secrets-mana... https://github.com/hashicorp/vault :
> Refer to Build Certificate Authority (CA) in Vault with an offline Root for an example of using a root CA external to Vault.
https://github.com/openwrt/luci/blob/master/applications/luc...
https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/tutorials/secrets-mana... https://github.com/hashicorp/vault :
> Refer to Build Certificate Authority (CA) in Vault with an offline Root for an example of using a root CA external to Vault.
My project, getlocalcert.net[1] may be the one you're thinking of.
Since I'm also building in this space, I'll give my perspective. Local certificate generation is complicated. If you spend the time, you can figure it out, but it's begging for a simpler solution. You can use tools like mkcert[2] for anything that's local to your machine. However, if you're already using ACME in production, maybe you'd prefer to use ACME locally? I think that's what Anchor offers, a unified approach.
There's a couple references in the Anchor blog about solving the distribution problem by building better tooling[3]. I'm eager to learn more, that's a tough nut to crack. My theory for getlocalcert is that the distribution problem is too difficult (for me) to solve, so I layer the tool on top of Let's Encrypt certificates instead. The end result for both tools is a trusted TLS certificate issued via ACME automation.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36674224
2. https://github.com/FiloSottile/mkcert
3. https://blog.anchor.dev/the-acme-gap-introducing-anchor-part...