@c Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
@c This is part of the GnuPG manual.
@c For copying conditions, see the file gnupg.texi.

@node System Notes
@chapter Notes pertaining to certain OSes.

GnuPG has been developed on GNU/Linux systems and is know to work on
almost all Free OSes.  All modern POSIX systems should be supported
right now, however there are probably a lot of smaller glitches we need
to fix first.  The major problem areas are:

@itemize
@item
We are planning to use file descriptor passing for interprocess
communication.  This will allow us save a lot of resources and improve
performance of certain operations a lot.  Systems not supporting this
won't gain these benefits but we try to keep them working the standard
way as it is done today.

@item
We require more or less full POSIX compatibility.  This has been
around for 15 years now and thus we don't believe it makes sense to
support non POSIX systems anymore.  Well, we of course the usual
workarounds for near POSIX systems well be applied.

There is one exception of this rule: Systems based the Microsoft Windows
API (called here @emph{W32}) will be supported to some extend.

@end itemize


@menu
* W32 Notes::             Microsoft Windows Notes
@end menu


@node W32 Notes
@section Microsoft Windows Notes

@noindent
Current limitations are:

@itemize

@item
@command{gpgconf} does not create backup files, so in case of trouble
your configuration file might get lost.

@item
@command{watchgnupg} is not available.  Logging to sockets is not
possible.

@item
The periodical smartcard status checking done by @command{scdaemon} is
not yet supported.

@end itemize
