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
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
