Stable GnuPG: 1.4.12 vs 2.0.18

[Werner Koch]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2012 07:20, bisson at archlinux.org said:

> We understand the GnuPG-2 branch is very different to GnuPG-1. Hence our
> question: will you consider the GnuPG-2 branch as stable as GnuPG-1 some
> day in the future, or is this already the case?

We maintain two stable branches:  1.4. and 2.0.  If you ask which one
you should use, the answer depends on the environment:

1. For unattended servers, 1.4 is is the easiest solution.  In general
   you will only encrypt or verify signatures on such boxes.  Thus there
   is no need for a passphrase.

2. For old Unix systems with 2.x build problems, you may resort to 1.4.

3. For all desktop systems, 2.0 is the suggested versions.  New
   development is only done on 2.0.  The standard installer for Windows
   uses 2.x.  All new ports are even using 2.1.  In case you really
   really don't want the Pinentry, 2.1 will eventually offer you a way
   to use the passphrase in the same as done in 1.4.


If you build 2.0, I even suggest to use the configure option
--enable-standard-socket which uses ~/.gnupg/S.gpg-agent as the default
IPC socket.  For home directories on remote file systems which don't
support local sockets, it would be useful to document that the option
"no-use-standard-socket" in the gpg-agent.conf file reverts it back to
the old behaviour.  We have a very good experience with an on-the-fly
started gpg-agent under Windows and there is no reason not to use this
also under Unix.  2.1 will make this the default anyway.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner


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