Smartcards and 1.4

[David Shaw]

On Jan 17, 2012, at 5:50 AM, Werner Koch wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> GnuPG 1.4 uses the smartcard code from 2.0.  This is made possible by
> using some glue code and copies of the required source files.  The
> problem with this approach is that testing the smartcard functions is
> very time consuming.  Thus I consider a change for post 1.4.12:
> 
> Either:
> 
> 1. Drop the smartcard stuff completely.
> 
> 2. Feature freeze, keep the code as it is and don't update it from 2.0.
>   (I will do this for 1.4.12)
> 
> 3. Keep the functionality but require the use of the gpg-agent.
>   (As of now gpg uses the gpg-agent if available but falls back to an
>   included copy of scdaemon code other wise).
> 
> Comments?

I still use 1.4.x heavily (baked into various things), and smartcard support is important to me, so I'm obviously against #1.

As I see it, #2 and #3 both still allow using smartcards with 1.4.x.  #2 will keep working for a while, but eventually the built-in code will be old enough to cause a problem, after which the agent will be the only way to do it?  Do I understand you correctly?

David