[gentoo-dev] gnupg-1, gnupg-2, gpgme, & slight apology

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

First off to get the apology out of the way. Me being a user of both
seahorse and gnupg, I wasn't fully aware of the mess going on in between
the two. So in that regard I do apologize to Alon Bar-Lev ( alonbl ).
Things are not so cut and dry, and I could see where one might have the
need for eselect there. Although there might be other options as well.

The story as clear and concise as I can make it. Yes upstream created
gnupg-1 and gnupg-2 to co-exist. However upstream did not do anything to
address a VERY popular wrapper to gnugp, gpgme. Presently most apps like
seahorse use gpgme to interface with gnupg. Instead of doing it
directly. At the present time you end up linking gpgme to either gnupg-1
or gnupg-2. No means to do both, and that's where the eselect part comes
into play. Ideally apps should interface directly, but upstream didn't
really encourage that, and it's why gpgme exists in the first place.
Which might die.

There are other issues, like gpgme executing gpg on each invocation. So
it's hardly ideal and from what Robin (robbat2) has told me. They might
be getting rid of gpgme and/or introducing a --server flag or something
like that for gnupg. Not 100% clear there and doesn't really matter per
our present problems and situations. But would be a performance benefit
from that change :)

Despite other distros shipping both gnupg-1 and gnupg-2. They are just
now seeing the problems. Because being binary, I don't believe gpgme was
ever linked against gnupg-2. So it's there for users, but apps really
aren't bound to it. So some like Debian are hitting this now, when we
ran into it a year ago.

Now that their is full understanding, and some clarity. It still doesn't
present us with a solution at this time. Seems like most all issues with
gnupg-2 have been worked out, but a few remain. Not sure how important
it is to address those. I have no doubt both Alon and Robin are working
on those as time permits.

Slots and eselect is one way to go. I mentioned to Robin, maybe doing a
USE flag on gpgme, to control what it's bound to, like gpg2 or gpg,
since the later is already a USE flag I believe. Slotting both in the
mean time, till the gpgme mess is cleared up. That way users could chose
what gpgme is linked to, and still use gnupg-2/gnupg-1 or etc. But like
before, totally up to those working on it, Alon and Robin.

Anyway just wanted to take a moment to apologize a bit. It's quite a
mess, and I do appreciate those in Gentoo undertaking it, and seeing it
through. Very sorry for any flack or abrasiveness. Just got sucked into
all this as just a user of said apps.

But really most all are problems are gpgme. Upstream is JUST now
starting to acknowledge that problem. When people have been pointing it
out for over a year :) It's a wonderful mess.

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
Gentoo/Java