>From Florian Weimer on Thursday, 21 June, 2001:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>> Florian Weimer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
>> > > It's clear to me we need a virtual package for "pgp implementation"
>> > > that both pgp and gnupg can provide.
>> > Uh, this doesn't work. Even the PGP releases aren't completely
>> > compatible among themselves, and GnuPG has got a completely different
>> > command line interface.
>> > This makes as much sense as a virutal package "scripting language"
>> > which is provided by Python, Perle, Guile, and others.
>> In order to have a virtual package, there is absolutely no need that
>> the various packages that provide it have compatible or even remotely
>> similar interfaces.
>> Consider, for example, the "editor" virtual package.
>Eh, software which provides the 'editor' virtual package *has* a
>consistent command line interface. The user interfaces are extremely
>different, but this doesn't matter much.
So why not create in the virtual package an actual wrapper script (e.g.
dpgpw for 'Debian PGP Wrapper') that detects the version of pgp or gpg
or whatever is installed on the system (or chooses which one to
use if multiple pgp implementations are installed), detects which
version is installed, and presents to the end user a unified interface
to the implementations (and maybe allows the user to, through clever use
of options, use something that, say, pgp has but gnupg doesn't).
Better yet, each package maintainer of a pgp implementation could present
a debian-standard unified interface via dpgpw-<pgp implementation>, such
as dpgpw-gpg for GNUPG, since each package maintainer would better know how
to make the debian-standard interface work for his or her individual
pgp implementation. Then all dpgpw would have to do is find out which
implementations and which versions are installed, and then auto-select
(or have an option to select) the appropriate one.
Who knows? Maybe a Debian Standard GPG Interface might become an industry
standard? :)
-Joseph
--
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"IBM were providing source code in the 1960's under similar terms.
VMS source code was available under limited licenses to customers
from the beginning. Microsoft are catching up with 1960."
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