Subject: Re: bpg request for comments
To: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
From: Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net>
List: tech-security
Date: 07/22/2005 11:24:18
On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:

> You give good reasons for most of my statement -- that we really need a
> better interface.  My concern is the programmatic interface.  At least
> two packages I rely on -- exmh and psi -- understand the gpg interface.

I had a quick look at psi, and its usage of gpg looks so primitive that
it would not be hard to cons up a very basic gpg-command-line look-alike
that would cover the required functionality.

Why don't you write up some use cases proposing how we might develop
support for these programs in two different ways: 1. emulating
interfaces well enough for the existing programs, unchanged, to use
BPG, and 2. if we were to change the programs, what the idea interface
between them and BPG (probably via library calls) would be.

If you're short on time, these don't have to be detailed; a paragraph on
each, or even just the first and a note that we should write the second,
is better than nothing at all. It would at least get it on the radar.

Manuel will probaby be going through the responses over the next few
days and integrating them into the use cases; once we've got a fair
cross-section of what people want to do, we can come up with some sort
of overall design for the system that will handle all of that.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   +81 90 7737 2974   http://www.NetBSD.org
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