> This is an important point (using the API), because trying to use `gpg` > in scripts is terribly difficult. I don't understand why `gpg` does not > follow the unix philosophy of being easily used in scripts and > cooperating easily with other commands.
GnuPG is, believe it or not, a lot more like Apache than it is like grep, cat, or wc. When I start an Apache server it always asks me for an SSL certificate password, it opens network connections, it spawns daemons, it awaits connections... etc. When I run "gpg2 --card-status", GnuPG has to spawn at least two daemons: gpg-agent and scdaemon. When I do a "--recv-key" I'm opening HTTPS connections with the outside world. When I do a signing operation, gpg-agent has to connect with gpg2 and do complex handoffs between them. GnuPG isn't a single tool. GnuPG is a complete platform, a whole system, the same way that Apache or MySQL are. Thinking that the gpg command-line tool is GnuPG is sort of like thinking apachectl is Apache. In both cases they're just tools that you use to manipulate a far larger software ecosystem. _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
