State of the GnuPG ports

Leonardo Brondani Schenkel leonardo at schenkel.net
Mon Sep 4 21:17:47 UTC 2017


Hi,

Motivated by https://trac.macports.org/ticket/54749 and the recent 
change in upstream GnuPG 2.1.x and the new 2.2.0 to install as "gpg" 
instead of "gpg2" I would like to start a discussion about the future of 
all the GnuPG ports and how to address the inevitable issues that will 
arise due to the binary name change and assumptions that will be broken 
in 'downstream' ports.

The current situation:
- port "gnupg" installs as $prefix/bin/gpg
- port "gnupg2" installs as $prefix/bin/gpg2
- port "gnupg21" install as $prefix/bin/gpg
   (and conflicts with the above)

Now GnuPG 2.2.0 was released. Quoting the announcement 
<https://lwn.net/Articles/732135/>:

> The GnuPG team is pleased to announce the availability of a new
> release of GnuPG: version 2.2.0.  See below for a list of new features
> and bug fixes.  This release marks the start of a new long term
> support series to replace the 2.0.x series which will reach
> end-of-life on 2017-12-31.
...
> This release incorporates all changes from the 2.1 series including
> these from the release candidate 2.1.23:
...
> A detailed description of the changes in the 2.2 (formerly 2.1) branch
> can be found at <https://gnupg.org/faq/whats-new-in-2.1.html>.

So GnuPG 2.2.x is supposed to be the successor of both the 2.0.x branch 
(which is reaching EOL at the end of this year) and the 2.1.x branch.

My suggestion for how MacPorts should handle this, moving forward, and 
to reduce disruption:

- port "gnupg" stays the same
- port "gnupg2" becames 2.2.x and installs as $prefix/bin/gpg, and a 
symlink in $prefix/bin/gpg2 for backwards compatibility and to satisfy 
existing ports
- port "gnupg21" is made obsolete with a note to install "gnupg2"

One advantage of the above is that the status quo will become simpler 
than currently is.

Any thoughts?

// Leonardo.


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