Changes in GnuPG

[Werner Koch]

On Thu,  9 Jan 2020 13:01, Mark said:

> Thanks for the explantion of the new public key format. If I understand
> it correctly, the old system was like a flat file an this new one is
> more like an indexed database that allows faster lookups.

Right.  The keybox format includes meta data so that there is no
requirement to parse each and every key in the keyring to compute the
fingerprint while gpg is searching for a key with a specific
fingerprint.

Actually there is no index although the format is prepared for this.  I
don't think that we will ever add an inde, though.  The next major
version instead will come with an option to store the keys in an SQLite
database file.  Thus, as it has been always said, please use the
--import and --export options to convey OpenPGP or X.509 keys.  Only if
you want to keep two GnuPG installations of the same version in sync you
may copy the entire GNUPGHOME (e.g. ~/.gnupg) - even between different
platforms.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner


@rjh: I guess you will now remark about random_seed, but I don't think
tha this is anymore an issue with modern versions.  The entropy
gathering changed quite a bit in the 2.2 and we may eventually remove
that file.  (Due to the new JitterRNG which is sufficient on Windows and
the faster getrandom call on Linux).

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.
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