KMail PGP/MIME howto and Debian
I am tracking Debian Unstable, and just got KMail 1.7. It's looking
spiffy!
This prompted me to finally get Aegypten working properly, since the
built-in OpenPGP stopped working. It's working just fine, but a few
issues tickled my curiosity bone. I might write a Debian-specific howto
for the Linux Society of Sweden, so any elightenment would be
appreciated.
I followed this howto:
http://kmail.kde.org/kmail-pgpmime-howto.html
...which has the following to say:
> Prerequisites
> The KDEPIM package should depend on libgpgme >= 0.4.5. If it does not,
> complain to the packager.
I don't have the whole KDEPIM package installed, but neither it nor
KMail depend on libgpgme as far as I can see. In the repository, I see
libgpgme10 at version 0.4.0-1, libgpgme11 at 0.9.0-1, libgpgme6 at
0.3.16-2 as well as libgpgme11-dev at 0.9.0-1 and libgpgme-dev at
0.3.16-2. All but the dev packages are installed.
I found no active or archived bug report against KMail or KDEPIM
relating to this in the BTS. Should one be filed?
> If KDEPIM does not depend on GpgME, there are two alternatives the
> packager may have taken, both of which are not supported by the KDE
> project:
>
> 1. The packager uses gpgme-copy in kdepim, which is a statically built
> GpgME, provided for the convenience of the developers and only
> compiled if no suitable GpgME is found on the system. This is not
> meant to be used in packaging, but this howto still applies to this
> alternative.
>
> 2. The packager has shipped a patched version of KMail that does not
> require GpgME to build. Needless to say that in this case, this howto
> won't be of any use for you, since such a stripped-down KMail won't
> support cryptography anyway.
Since it is working, I assume alternative (1) is the case. Is that
correct? If so, what's the rationale behind using mechanisms not meant
for packaging in packaging? (This is not meant as criticism; I would
like to understand the issues in case I write a howto on the topic.)
> The KDEPIM package should suggest pinentry (>= 0.7.1). If it does not,
> complain to the packager.
Again, as far as I can see, this is not the case, and it's not in the
BTS. Should it be? The difference between the howto and reality
is a bit puzzling, as Debian seems to have been the reference platform
for writing the howto.
Just for reference (it's known and being worked on, but inexperienced
users may be confused by it if following the howto literally):
gnupg 1.9.9 gave the following error on make check:
FAIL: sm-sign+verify
asschk: read_assuan: received incomplete line on fd 6
FAIL: sm-verify
======================================
2 of 2 tests failed
Please report to gnupg-devel@gnupg.org
======================================
According to:
http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gpa-dev/2003-January/001137.html
...this can be safely ignored unless using S/MIME (which the howto does
not claim to focus on anyway), so I did ignore it and make installed
anyway, which was successful.
--
Alex Nordstrom
http://lx.n3.net/
Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to debian-kde.
Reply to: