[Announce] GnuPG 1.4.1 released

Werner Koch wk at gnupg.org
Tue Mar 15 17:53:36 CET 2005


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Hello!
    
We are pleased to announce the availability of a new stable GnuPG
release: Version 1.4.1

The GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) is GNU's tool for secure communication
and data storage.  It is a complete and free replacement of PGP and
can be used to encrypt data and to create digital signatures.  It
includes an advanced key management facility and is compliant with the
proposed OpenPGP Internet standard as described in RFC2440.

Getting the Software
====================

Please follow the instructions found at http://www.gnupg.org/download/
or read on:

GnuPG 1.4.1 may be downloaded from one of the GnuPG mirror sites or
direct from ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/ .  The list of mirrors can be
found at http://www.gnupg.org/mirrors.html .  Note, that GnuPG is not
available at ftp.gnu.org.

On the mirrors you should find the following files in the *gnupg*
directory:

  gnupg-1.4.1.tar.bz2 (2756k)
  gnupg-1.4.1.tar.bz2.sig

      GnuPG source compressed using BZIP2 and OpenPGP signature.

  gnupg-1.4.1.tar.gz (3964k)
  gnupg-1.4.1.tar.gz.sig

      GnuPG source compressed using GZIP and OpenPGP signature.

  gnupg-1.4.0-1.4.1.diff.bz2 (650k)

      A patch file to upgrade a 1.4.0 GnuPG source. 

Select one of them. To shorten the download time, you probably want to
get the BZIP2 compressed file.  Please try another mirror if
exceptional your mirror is not yet up to date.

In the *binary* directory, you should find these files:

  gnupg-w32cli-1.4.1.exe (1406k)
  gnupg-w32cli-1.4.1.exe.sig

      GnuPG compiled for Microsoft Windows and OpenPGP signature.
      Note that this is a command line version and now comes with a
      graphical installer tool.  The source files are the same as
      given above.


Checking the Integrity
======================

In order to check that the version of GnuPG which you are going to
install is an original and unmodified one, you can do it in one of
the following ways:

 * If you already have a trusted version of GnuPG installed, you
   can simply check the supplied signature.  For example to check the
   signature of the file gnupg-1.4.1.tar.bz2 you would use this command:

     gpg --verify gnupg-1.4.1.tar.bz2.sig

   This checks whether the signature file matches the source file.
   You should see a message indicating that the signature is good and
   made by that signing key.  Make sure that you have the right key,
   either by checking the fingerprint of that key with other sources
   or by checking that the key has been signed by a trustworthy other
   key.  Note, that you can retrieve the signing key using "finger wk
   'at' g10code.com" or "finger dd9jn 'at' gnu.org" or using the
   keyservers.  I recently prolonged the expiration date; thus you
   might need a fresh copy of that key.

   Never use a GnuPG version you just downloaded to check the
   integrity of the source - use an existing GnuPG installation!

 * If you are not able to use an old version of GnuPG, you have to verify
   the SHA-1 checksum.  Assuming you downloaded the file
   gnupg-1.4.1.tar.bz2, you would run the sha1sum command like this:

     sha1sum gnupg-1.4.1.tar.bz2

   and check that the output matches the first line from the
   following list:

ebd16ef9d3fd3c38e38cf39e6347ed058fd12840  gnupg-1.4.1.tar.bz2
f8e982d5e811341a854ca9c15feda7d5aba6e09a  gnupg-1.4.1.tar.gz
db573a6c3707f65797b569efda7e0905c4c4469c  gnupg-w32cli-1.4.1.exe




Upgrade Information
===================

If you are upgrading from a version prior to 1.0.7, you should run the
script tools/convert-from-106 once.  Please note also that due to a
bug in versions prior to 1.0.6 it may not be possible to downgrade to
such versions unless you apply the patch
http://www.gnupg.org/developer/gpg-woody-fix.txt .

If you have any problems, please see the FAQ and the mailing list
archive at http://lists.gnupg.org.  Please direct questions to the
gnupg-users at gnupg.org mailing list.


What's New
===========

There are too many changes to list them here.  Please check out the
NEWS file or read the summary at the end of this announcement.


Internationalization
====================

GnuPG comes with support for 28 languages:

  American English         Indonesian (id)[*]
  Bela-Russian (be)[*]     Italian (it)[*]
  Catalan (ca)[*]          Japanese (ja)
  Czech (cs)               Polish (pl)[*]
  Danish (da)[*]           Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR)[*]
  Dutch (nl)[*]            Portuguese (pt)[*]
  Esperanto (eo)[*]        Romanian (ro)
  Estonian (et)[*]         Russian (ru)[*]
  Finnish (fi)[*]          Slovak (sk)[*]
  French (fr)              Spanish (es)[*]
  Galician (gl)[*]         Swedish (sv)[*]
  German (de) [*]          Traditional Chinese (zh_TW)
  Greek (el) [*]           Simplified Chinese (zh_CN)
  Hungarian (hu) [*]       Turkish (tr) [*]

Languages marked with [*] were not updated for this release and you
will most likely notice untranslated messages. Many thanks to the
translators for their ongoing support of GnuPG.

Due to a lot of stylistic changes to the strings and about 150 new
strings, most translations are not up to date. However we don't think
that this is reason enough to hold back the release.  Updated
translations will be added with the next releases.


Future Directions
=================

GnuPG 1.4.x is the current stable branch and will be kept as the easy
to use and build single-executable versions.  We plan to backport new
features from the development series to 1.4.

GnuPG 1.9.x is the new development series of GnuPG.  This version
merged the code from the Aegypten project and thus it includes the
gpg-agent, a smartcard daemon and gpg's S/MIME cousin gpgsm.  The
design is different to the previous versions and we may not support
all ancient systems - thus POSIX compatibility will be an absolute
requirement for supported platforms.  1.9 is as of now based on an
somewhat older 1.3 code but will peacefully coexist with other GnuPG
versions.


Support
=======

Developing and maintaining GnuPG and related software is nothing one
can do in the evening or on weekends.  We all spend a lot of time and
money on it.  David is actually doing this in his spare time beside
his day job; g10 Code employs Timo and Werner to work on this software
and would appreciate to refinance it by entering into support
contracts or other contributions.


Thanks
======

We have to thank all the people who helped with this release, be it
testing, coding, translating, suggesting, auditing, administering the
servers, spreading the word or answering questions on the mailing
lists.  Kudos to David Shaw who did most of the new features in 1.4
and discussed various OpenPGP problems in lengths at several working
groups.


Happy Hacking,


  The GnuPG Team (David, Timo and Werner)

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