Future OpenPGP Support in Thunderbird

[Patrick Brunschwig]

Werner Koch wrote on 16.10.2019 13:54:
> On Wed, 16 Oct 2019 13:07, Patrick Brunschwig said:
> 
>> something on their PC and more. Gpgme may handle some of these issues,
>> but the fact remains: an external component makes things a lot more
>> complex, especially for support.
> 
> Right GPGME handles this all pretty well and I have suggested often
> enough that you should move to GPGME so that we can better support
> Enigmail.  Your comment about external components is right from a
> company POV; however Enigmail is also an external component to TB and
> thus TB suffers from very similar problem.  GpgOL and GnuPG both are

Which is why the step to implement OpenPGP in Thunderbird is the right
way to go.

> maintained by us and thus I know very well this helps to reduce
> friction.

We're getting slightly off-topic, but still:
You're perfectly right with everything you say. But you seem to
underestimate the difference between zipping an extension that is pure
JavaScript, and preparing an extension that needs to contain compiled
libraries for multiple platforms in order to cater for all variants of
pre-installed GnuPG installations and all variations of Thunderbird
installations (to be precise, at the very least I'd have to ship for 6
platforms: Win/mac/Linux * 32/64 bit).

Frankly speaking, if I would consider to switch to a library instead of
calling GnuPG directly, I would at first evaluate OpenPGP.js in Enigmail
-- that would be a lot more natural.

-Patrick