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@c Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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@c This is part of the GnuPG manual.
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@c For copying conditions, see the file gnupg.texi.
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@chapter Notes pertaining to certain OSes.
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GnuPG has been developed on GNU/Linux systems and is know to work on
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almost all Free OSes. All modern POSIX systems should be supproted
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right now, however there are probably a lot of smaller glitches we need
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to fix first. The major problem areas are:
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For logging to sockets and other internal operations the
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@code{fopencookie} function (@code{funopen} under *BSD) is used. This
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is a very convient function which makes it possible to create outputs in
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a structures and easy maintainable way. The drawback however is that
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most proprietary OSes don't support this function. At g10@tie{}Code we
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have looked into several ways on how to overcome this limitation but no
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sufficiently easy and maintainable way has been found. Porting
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@emph{glibc} to a general POSIX system is of course an option and would
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make writing portable software much easier; this it has not yet been
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done and the system administrator wouldneed to cope with the GNU
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specific admin things in addition to the generic ones of his system.
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We have now settled to use explicit stdio wrappers with a functionality
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similar to funopen. Although the code for this has already been written
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(@emph{libestream}), we have not yet changed GnuPG to use it.
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This means that on systems not supporting either @code{funopen} or
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@code{fopencookie}, logging to a socket won't work, prompts are not
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formatted as pretty as theyshould be and @command{gpgsm}'s
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@code{LISTKEYS} Assuan command does not work.
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We are planning to use file descriptor passing for interprocess
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communication. This will allow us save a lot of resources and improve
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performance of certain operations a lot. Systems not supporting this
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won't gain these benefits but we try to keep them working the satndard
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way as it is done today.
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We require more or less full POSIX compatibility. This has been
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arround for 15 years now and thus we don't believe it makes sense to
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support non POSIX systems anymore. Well, we of course the usual
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workarounds for near POSIX systems well be applied.
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There is one exception of this rule: Systems based the Microsoft Windows
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API (called here @emph{W32}) will be supported to some extend.
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* W32 Notes:: Microsoft Windows Notes
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@section Microsoft Windows Notes
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The port to Microsoft Windows based OSes is pretty new and has some
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limitations we might remove over time. Note, that we have not yet done
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any security audit and you should not use any valuable private key. In
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particular, @strong{using it on a box with more than one user, might
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lead to a key compromise}.
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Current limitations are:
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The @code{LISTKEYS} Assuan command of @command{gpgsm} is not supported.
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Using the command line options @option{--list-keys} or
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@option{--list-secret-keys} does however work.
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No support for CRL checks. By default the option
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@option{--disable-crl-checks} has been turned on and the log will show
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an appropriate warning message. The reason for this is that the
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separate CRL checking daemin (@command{dirmngr}) has not been ported to
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@command{gpgconf} does not create backup files, so in case of trouble
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your configuration file might get lost.
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@command{watchgnupg} is not available. Logging to sockets is not
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The periodical smartcard status checking done by @command{scdaemon} is
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Detached running of the gpg-agent is not directly supported. It needs
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to be started in a console and left alone then.
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doc/sysnotes.texi
