Mailing List Archive: Info about libgcrypt

Info about libgcrypt

Dec 17, 2001, 4:24 PM

Post #1 of 6 (1154 views)

Greetings!

I found this list from the home page at www.gnupg.org. There
unfortunately was little info there on what the gcrypt library is/will
be, but if I assume correctly it will provide a programmatic interface
to the cryptographic methods that GPG currently uses? (ie. GPG 1.1 will
provide just the front end and "business logic") If I am not mistaken,
and this is indeed the plan, I'm quite excited to see it hapenning, and
find myself wondering about the status - a good, free, public key crypto
library is exactly what I'd like to start with in implementing a certain
project idea of mine, and it would be ugly at best to wrap the gpg
binary with system calls. Is there a snapshot available? (I poked
around on ftp.gnupg.org, but wasn't entire sure what was what there...)
If you are actually in the implementation phase of this, and have a
task list, I'd love to look it over to see if there's anything I'm
capable of helping out with. (I'm a math undergrad with an interest in
cryptography, and a pretty capable C/Java programmer as well)

Cheers,
dj trombley
<dtrom@bumba.net>

Re: Info about libgcrypt [ In reply to ]

Marcus.Brinkmann at ruhr-uni-bochum

Dec 17, 2001, 4:31 PM

Post #2 of 6 (1148 views)

Permalink

On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 06:24:21PM -0500, Dave Trombley wrote:
> a good, free, public key crypto
> library is exactly what I'd like to start with in implementing a certain
> project idea of mine,

It's public key and symmetric key.

> Is there a snapshot available?

You can get the latest development version from CVS:

The normal way to access the CVS is by doing a

cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.gnupg.org:/cvs/gnupg login

with the password "anoncvs" and then checkout the sources using

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.gnupg.org:/cvs/gnupg checkout -r libgcrypt

> If you are actually in the implementation phase of this, and have a
> task list, I'd love to look it over to see if there's anything I'm
> capable of helping out with. (I'm a math undergrad with an interest in
> cryptography, and a pretty capable C/Java programmer as well)

There is a TODO file, I don't know if it is up-to-date, or anywhere near to
completeness. Welcome and have fun!

Thanks,
Marcus

--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org brinkmd@debian.org
Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org marcus@gnu.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de

Re: Info about libgcrypt [ In reply to ]

drevil at sidereal

Dec 17, 2001, 7:45 PM

Post #3 of 6 (1145 views)

Permalink

An OpenPGP library would be awesome. I would link it into Postgres,
which would be perfect for some stuff that I'm working on. It could
also be linked into emacs and many other places.

Re: Info about libgcrypt [ In reply to ]

wk at gnupg

Dec 18, 2001, 1:05 AM

Post #4 of 6 (1146 views)

Permalink

On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 18:24:21 -0500, Dave Trombley said:

> I found this list from the home page at www.gnupg.org. There
> unfortunately was little info there on what the gcrypt library is/will
> be, but if I assume correctly it will provide a programmatic interface
> to the cryptographic methods that GPG currently uses? (ie. GPG 1.1

Right. You get all the cryptographic building blocks and a few
utility functions: ciphers, public key, hashs, random. It is usable
and has a stable API.

It is at least used by GNUTLS and the gpgsm (GnuPG for S/MIME); you
can download it from ftp.gnupg.org:/gcrypt/alpha/libgcrypt.

A new version (1.1.5) will be released in a few days. There is a
incomplete reference file /doc/reference.{dvi,html} in the package but
for more documentation you might want to look at the module newpg of
the aegypten project: www.gnupg.org/aegypten/

Werner

--
Werner Koch Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur
g10 Code GmbH et non datur, nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est.
Privacy Solutions -- Augustinus

Re: Info about libgcrypt [ In reply to ]

wk at gnupg

Dec 18, 2001, 1:07 AM

Post #5 of 6 (1159 views)

Permalink

On 18 Dec 2001 02:45:11 -0000, Evil said:

> An OpenPGP library would be awesome. I would link it into Postgres,
> which would be perfect for some stuff that I'm working on. It could

Yeah, this has been discussed for a long time. For now I'd suggest to
use gpgme. Yes there is some overhead for using it with gpg but
eventually this will be reduced the same way we do it for gpgsm.

Werner

--
Werner Koch Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur
g10 Code GmbH et non datur, nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est.
Privacy Solutions -- Augustinus

Re: Info about libgcrypt [ In reply to ]

nisse at lysator

Jan 10, 2002, 4:43 PM

Post #6 of 6 (1157 views)

Permalink

Dave Trombley <dtrom@bumba.net> writes:

> If I am not mistaken, and this is indeed the plan, I'm quite excited
> to see it hapenning, and find myself wondering about the status - a
> good, free, public key crypto library is exactly what I'd like to
> start with in implementing a certain project idea of mine,

Depending on what you need, you may also want to look at
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/nettle. It's goals and level of
abstraction is quite different from gcrypt's, though. It includes a
reference manual. The 1.0 version didn't include any public-key stuff;
the version currently in cvs includes some rsa code and an optional
RSAREF-compatible interface to it. Help and comments on both code and
API design are welcome.

Best regards,
/Niels

PS. Werner, let me know if you want me to stop "marketing" Nettle on
this list, and I'll comply. There's currently no Nettle-specific
mailing list.