HOWTO on interfacing with gnupg/pgp?

[Marc Mutz]

Hi again!

I'm playing with the thought of using gpgme for KDE2.3's KMail. BUT:

On Monday 18 June 2001 10:15, Werner Koch wrote:
>  || On Sun, 17 Jun 2001 23:56:26 +0200
>  || Marc Mutz <Marc.Mutz@uni-bielefeld.de> wrote:
>
>  mm> Is it ready for production yet?
>
> Use it.  It is probably better debugged than other tools invoking gpg
> and well, I amthe manin author of both and so I take care that both
> are working.
>

Quoting the web page:
---
GPGME is still work in progress, so don't expect that everything works 
and be careful when using production quality secret keys. 
---

>  mm> Does it support PGP?
>
> Of course not!  The GNU project[1] does not support proprietary
> software or advocates its use.
>

Quoting the web page:
---
GnuPG Made Easy (GPGME) is a library designed to make access to GnuPG 
easier for applications. It provides a High-Level Crypto API for 
encryption, decryption, signing, signature verification and key 
management. Currently it uses GnuPG as it's backend but the API isn't 
restricted to this engine; in fact it is planned to add other backends 
to it. 
---

Pay esp. attention to the last sentence.

I must admit that I'm confused.

What if we ship a KDE-2.3 which requires the then-current gpgme. Will 
that one (in three or four months from now) be ready for "production 
quality secret keys"?

What if we port our current pgp interfacing to be a backend to gpgme? 
Will this code be accepted for inclusion or do we have to maintain it 
as a patch and tell people: "Patch gpgme yourself if you want pgp 
support"?

Marc

-- 
Marc Mutz <Marc@Mutz.com>
http://marc.mutz.com/
http://www.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/~mmutz/
http://EncryptionHOWTO.sourceforge.net/