Implementing a WKS solution

[Dashamir Hoxha]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 9:14 PM Ingo Klöcker <kloecker at kde.org> wrote:
>
> On Montag, 22. Februar 2021 16:31:14 CET Dashamir Hoxha via Gnupg-devel wrote:
> > By the way, using the header 'X-WKS-Loop' with 'gpg-wks-server' seems
> > superfluous to me, since 'gpg-wks-server' already adds automatically
> > the header 'Wks-Phase', which should be sufficient for detecting a
> > loop. Am I missing something?
>
> Well, X-WKS-Loop is a single purpose header. Wks-Phase is another header with
> specific purpose and semantics. It's usually not a good idea to (ab)use some
> header for a completely orthogonal second purpose. (Using one artifact for one
> purpose only is a general advice in software engineering.)
>
> What if in a later version phase tracking is solved differently? Then you are
> stuck with a header that is only used for loop detection and has the then
> completely inappropriate and confusing name Wks-Phase.

It seems to me that phase tracking, no matter how it is done, solves
the loop problem as well, because 'gpg-wks-server' will discard a
message if it is not in the correct sequence. That's why there is no
need to check for a loop outside 'gpg-wks-server'.

>
> Regards,
> Ingo
> _______________________________________________
> Gnupg-devel mailing list
> Gnupg-devel at gnupg.org
> http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-devel