[Help-gnutls] Re: TLS/OpenPGP draft expiring soon

[Simon Josefsson]

Mario Lenz <mario.lenz at gmx.net> writes:

> Hi!
>
>> In particular, OpenCDK isn't really in the shape that I'd
>> like to see it in.  Funding someone to work on that (I'm available :))
>> would be one way.
>
> Well, maybe I could spare some time to help you. What is you don't like
> about OpenCDK? And what is it intended to *do* exactly? A definition of
> the main programming goal would be a start. For example: I'm using
> OpenCDK to get keys out of a keyring and use them with libgcrypt. Is
> this it, and the encrypt/decrypt/sign/whatever functions are goodies, or
> is it the other way round?

My general uneasiness around OpenCDK stems from the same kind of
questions, which appear to be unanswered...  Starting a texinfo manual
for OpenCDK, with some general introductions to what OpenCDK aims to
be would be immensely useful.

It seems as if OpenCDK duplicate some of the functionality that
properly belong to GnuPG.  However, as far as I know, there aren't any
APIs in GnuPG to do what OpenCDK does, even if the functionality is
there.  A serious question would be if we want to continue maintain
OpenCDK at all.  Making the same functionality be available from some
GnuPG component could give some advantages -- such as smartcard
support, gpg-agent support for passphrase caching, and hopefully
better maintained code.

Right now I keep maintaining OpenCDK because we are stuck with it, and
that approach rarely results in the best products...

I don't really have any thoughts about the code, I haven't looked hard
enough to really have a feeling of it.  I have a general preference to
use gnulib, though, and using gnulib modules where appropriate, and
there are some stuff in opencdk that could be replaced with some
gnulib module.

/Simon