[Announce] GnuPG 1.2.5 released
Werner Koch
wk at gnupg.org
Tue Jul 27 09:42:37 CEST 2004
[reposted due to the Mailman garbled signature]
Hello!
We are pleased to announce the availability of a new stable GnuPG
release: Version 1.2.5
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.
This is mainly a bug fix release; for details see the "What's New"
section below.
Getting the Software
====================
Please follow the instructions found at http://www.gnupg.org/download/
or read on:
GnuPG 1.2.5 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-1.2.5.tar.bz2 (2430k)
gnupg-1.2.5.tar.bz2.sig
GnuPG source compressed using BZIP2 and OpenPGP signature.
gnupg-1.2.5.tar.gz (3559k)
gnupg-1.2.5.tar.gz.sig
GnuPG source compressed using GZIP and OpenPGP signature.
gnupg-1.2.4-1.2.5.diff.gz (979k)
A patch file to upgrade a 1.2.4 GnuPG source. This file is
signed; you have to use GnuPG > 0.9.5 to verify the signature.
GnuPG has a feature to allow clear signed patch files which can
still be processed by the patch utility.
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-1.2.5.zip (1468k)
gnupg-w32cli-1.2.5.zip.sig
GnuPG compiled for Microsoft Windows and OpenPGP signature.
Note that this is a command line version and comes without a
graphical installer tool. You have to use an UNZIP utility to
extract the files and install them manually. The included file
README.W32 has further instructions.
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-1.2.4.tar.bz2 you would use this command:
gpg --verify gnupg-1.2.5.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 "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 MD5 checksum. Assuming you downloaded the file
gnupg-1.2.5.tar.bz2, you would run the md5sum command like this:
md5sum gnupg-1.2.5.tar.bz2
and check that the output matches the first line from the
following list:
9109ff94f7a502acd915a6e61d28d98a gnupg-1.2.5.tar.gz
e4991e46fde52b216410ef0f485b4217 gnupg-1.2.5.tar.bz2
d591cb58a7bc81d4e5572260ba2cd595 gnupg-1.2.4-1.2.5.diff.gz
3d93d73942117c4c0182cb15e01de70f gnupg-w32cli-1.2.5.zip
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
===========
Here is a list of major user visible changes since 1.2.4:
* New --ask-cert-level/--no-ask-cert-level option to turn on and
off the prompt for signature level when signing a key. Defaults
to on.
* New --min-cert-level option to disregard key signatures that are
under a specified level. Defaults to 1 (i.e. don't disregard
anything).
* New --max-output option to limit the amount of plaintext output
generated by GnuPG. This option can be used by programs which
call GnuPG to process messages that may result in plaintext
larger than the calling program is prepared to handle. This is
sometimes called a "Decompression Bomb".
* New --list-config command for frontends and other programs that
call GnuPG. See doc/DETAILS for the specifics of this.
* New --gpgconf-list command for internal use by the gpgconf
utility from gnupg 1.9.x.
* Some performance improvements with large keyrings. See
--enable-key-cache=SIZE in the README file for details.
* Some portability fixes for the OpenBSD/i386, HPPA, and AIX
platforms.
* Simplified Chinese translation.
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
may notice untranslated messages. Many thanks to the translators for
their ongoing support of GnuPG.
Future Directions
=================
GnuPG 1.2.x is the current stable branch and won't undergo any serious
changes. We will just fix bugs and add compatibility fixes as
required.
GnuPG 1.3.x is the version were we do most new stuff and it will lead
to the next stable version 1.4 not too far away.
GnuPG 1.9.x is next generation 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 based on an somewhat older 1.3 code and
will peacefully coexist with other GnuPG versions.
Happy Hacking,
The GnuPG Team (David, Stefan, Timo and Werner)
--
Werner Koch <wk at gnupg.org>
The GnuPG Experts http://g10code.com
Free Software Foundation Europe http://fsfeurope.org
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