w32 installation paths

[Maxine Brandt]

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Walter Torres wrote:

> >> However, the GnuPG home directory is an exception to this rule and you
> >> have to specify its location in the command line even when it's on the
> >> floppy. I assume that this exceptional behaviour is coded into the gpg
> >> binary. I considered working on the code to change this default home
> >> directory location to the floppy, but that wouldn't help those using GPG
> >> TO GO on a USB stick, so I left it as it was.
> 
> 
> OK. I lost you here.
> 
> If I have CMD/COMMAND.EXE, gnupg.exe, keys, etc on a UBS Stick, how is
> that different than a floppy?
> 
Unlike a floppy, which has a dedicated drive letter, the drive letter for USB sticks
will vary according to disk partitioning, and in any case it don't think it will be A :
even if your machine has no floppy drive.
> 
> >> One thought that occurs to me is to install the binaries and gpg.conf in
> >> the same directoy as cmd.exe (or command.com) so that gpg could pick up
> >> locations of keyrings etc from the configuration file (which would be the
> >> default "home"). But this is "Windows-think" and might cause more problems
> >> than it solves,considering gpg is designed for cross-platform compilation
> >> and Windows is bottom of the list of priorities.
> 
> 
> Yes, this is windows speak. But then again, I don't feel that this
> "segment" of users should be "ignored" (wrong word) because of that.
> 
> GPG is cross-platform, as many other (and a growing number of) Gnu apps are.
> 
> This doesn't mean that the MAKE can't be made to understand that "if
> WINDOWS, do this, otherwise do 'normal'"
> 
It does that already, in fact, concerning the location of the gpg default home directory.

Actually, my reasoning for not pursuing the change in the code for GPG TO GO
on a floppy seems no longer valid. Since my earlier post in this thread I've had
a look at the Windows version of 1.3.92 and it's  too big for a floppy. With the best
upx compression, the gpg.exe binary is almost 100kb larger than that of 1.2.5 and it
requires the iconv.dll which is more than 600kb - a total of 700kb extra. A bare-bones
version will just fit on the floppy, but there's virtually no room for files to encrypt or
decrypt.

So it looks like GPG TO GO using 1.4 is reserved for USB sticks, and the floppy
version will have to stay with the latest 1.2.x release.

> But then again, more and more PCs are becoming Linux, and not every Linux
> install has GPG, so this GOG TO GO would be a viable option for that user
> base as well.
> 
 GPG TO GO was conceived as a replacement for PGP 2 for people living in
nasty places where using encryption can sometimes get you killed, or worse.
It's designed to leave no trace on the host machine that encryption has taken
place and to be used on public machines, which in the vast majority run
Windows systems.

But from the feedback I've received, it fills the need of  many people who
have the problem of using GPG on work machines where they don't have the rights
to install, and Linux users could fall into this category . I've never seen a Linux
distribution that doesn't include GPG, but no doubt there are some installations
where it's not installed. 

I don't have a floppy drive on my Linux machine so I can't verify it , but if you
put the gpg binaries and gpg home directory files on a floppy, replace A: by fd0,
then you should be able to cd to the floppy and use the same commands as in
the Windows version. 

Salut

Maxine
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