Porting GPA to GPGME

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 09:15:37PM +0200, Miguel Coca wrote:
> I'm porting GPA to use GPGME.

Sounds good :)

> This is giving me problems:
> 
>         * The signatures page doesn't work at all. I can't figure out how to
>         list the signatures on a key with gpgme.

This is currently unsupported.  Seems we need to do some work here.

>         I thought trust items would
>         help with that, but I can't find out what they actually do :-)
>         (every key that I've tried gives me an empty list of them) Any
>         suggestions?

Possibly.  The trust item interface is experimental, but the main problem
right now is that it is also unsupported by GnuPG.  There was an
implementation for --list-trust-path in 1.81.2.20, but it went away when
the trustdb code was revamped in 1.81.2.21.  Werner, was that a temporary
thing or what do you envision for listing the signatures on a key?
 
>         * Exporting secret keys does not work, and I don't think it can be
>         done with gpgme.

It's arguably a bad thing to give out the secret key :)  Sometimes it might
not even be possible, like if it is stored on a smart card or otherwise
managed by gpg-agent.

>	Again, any suggestions? This also affects making
>       backups of secret keys.

Maybe Werner can make a comment on if it should be allowed to attempt that
in GPGME.

>         * Deleting keys should work as soon as that is fixed in gpgme
>         (according to the gnupg-devel archives, that's a known bug). Does
>         anyone know when that will be solved?

You need this change in GnuPG HEAD, will be in 1.2 I think:

* delkey.c (do_delete_key): Always allow to delete a key in batch mode
when specified by fingerprint.  Suggested by Enzo Michelangeli.

> Mostly the code is keeping it's original structure. While gpgme has some
> features that could be used to improve GPA, I think it's better to have
> something that works first, and then improve on it.

I also expect that we have to make some changes/improvements to GPGME.

> To assist during the migration, I've built a dummy gpapa with all the
> definitions and functions, but whose functions do nothing. That way we can
> compile the program even when it's a mix of both API's without touching the
> real gpapa, which probably has some code that will be needed later on. I'll
> commit them with the rest.

If the CVS version represents something I can compile and run, I would make
sure that I always follow your changes and set up a test environment, so I
can easier reproduce eventual problems with GPGME etc.  Just drop us a note
when you feel happy about the state of the repository for this type of
testing.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    marcus@gnu.org
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/