Why has GnuPG 1.4 been removed from Core?

Question

I have seen an email on the GnuPG mailing list few days ago regarding the state of GnuPG 1.4 vs 2.x. I'm shocked to see that today GnuPG 1.4 has been simply removed from Core.
Here is the original answer from the main GnuPG maintainer in the mailing list:
We maintain two stable branches:  1.4. and 2.0.  If you ask which one you should use, the answer depends on the environment:
1. For unattended servers, 1.4 is is the easiest solution.  In general you will only encrypt or verify signatures on such boxes.  Thus there is no need for a passphrase.
2. For old Unix systems with 2.x build problems, you may resort to 1.4.
3. For all desktop systems, 2.0 is the suggested versions.  New  development is only done on 2.0.  The standard installer for Windows uses 2.x.  All new ports are even using 2.1.  In case you really really don't want the Pinentry, 2.1 will eventually offer you a way  to use the passphrase in the same as done in 1.4.
I don't understand that move as both versions are considered stable and maintained and more importantly can live together. GnuPG2 has much more dependencies that 1.4. Furthermore in server like installations you really don't want to deal with GnuPG2 agent and so on, you want a standalone tool that works out of the box.
Can someone explain the motivation behind that move?  Can we put it back?
PS: I also noticed that the new GnuPG package creates a symbolic link so /usr/bin/gpg points to gpg2. Again that is misleading considering they not necessarily share the same commands.
Thanks
Last edited by alphazo (2012-03-28 08:15:31)

Answer 1

alphazo wrote:Enigmail is able to cache the PIN code for my OpenPGP card while gnome-keyring doesn't support it. I tried in the past to get rid of gnome-keyring and use gpg-agent instead but I had other issues too.
This may come a bit late, but have you set up gpg-agent already? With a short configuration (taking you 4 steps!) you will have even more convenience with gnupg2!
1. create /etc/profile.d/gpg-agent.sh with the following lines:
#!/bin/sh
envfile="${HOME}/.gnupg/gpg-agent.env"
if test -f "$envfile" && kill -0 $(grep GPG_AGENT_INFO "$envfile" | cut -d: -f 2) 2>/dev/null; then
eval "$(cat "$envfile")"
else
eval "$(gpg-agent --daemon --write-env-file "$envfile")"
fi
export GPG_AGENT_INFO # the env file does not contain the export statement
(taken from gnupg-Archwiki page)
2. add the following lines in .(ba|z|whatever-shell-you-use)shrc:
GPG_TTY=$(tty)
export GPG_TTY
(as recommended by gpg-agent man)
3. create ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf with the following lines: (saves the password for 6 hours!)
default-cache-ttl 216000
default-cache-ttl-ssh 216000
4. logout and login again.
If you now open your email programme, view a signed or encrypted email, (i.e. have to type in your password) and restart Thunderbird, the password is still cached, which wasn’t the case before!
Best, Jakob