Problems Installing GnuPG

[Mark H. Wood]

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On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Adam Pavelec wrote:
> On Thursday, October 09, 2003 10:42 PM [GMT-5=EST], John Clizbe
> <JPClizbe at comcast.net> wrote:
[snip]
> Ture...  Indeed...  Then again, there are some helper apps that use GPG
> which expect to see these Registry entries, even if the GPG directory is
> located in the root of C:\ -- WinPT Tray/WinPT OE come to mind...

An important point.

> Personally, I've always used C:\GnuPG and, to make things ultra-simple,
> placed a copy of gpg.exe in %windir%
>
> To each his own, right?!?

Yes, but there's also such a thing as observing established convention.
In the Win32 world, applications ought to default to installation into
%programfiles%\vendor\application (where %programfiles% is the localized
name of the Program Files directory, and should be obtained from the shell
using the function provided for that purpose) and should note its presence
by creating the key HKLM\Software\vendor\application in the Registry.

There's another key (I can look it up if you wish) which makes a file
"known" to Win32, so that you can just mention "gpg.exe" and Win32 will
know where to find it whether it is on the PATH or not.  You can even use
a value of that key to specify additions to PATH which apply only to that
program, which occasionally comes in handy.  Much neater than plunking
non-OS applications into %windir%.

All of this (and much more) is somewhere in the Logo Requirements
document, and I wish more developers (including a lot of billion-dollar
companies, *sigh*) would read it.  I've long since made a note to see what
I can contribute to the packaging and integration of GnuPG for MS Windows,
but since I never use it there I haven't done much yet.

- -- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood at IUPUI.Edu
MS Windows *is* user-friendly, but only for certain values of "user".
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