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doc: Add documentation for programmatic use of GnuPG. 

* doc/gpg.texi: New subsections on programmatic use of GnuPG,
ephemeral home directories, and the quick key manipulation interface.

Signed-off-by: Justus Winter <justus@g10code.com>
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Justus Winter 2016-12-16 13:49:16 +01:00
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@ -3742,10 +3742,56 @@ way to do this. The options @option{--status-fd} and @option{--batch}
are almost always required for this.
@menu
* Programmatic use of GnuPG:: Programmatic use of GnuPG
* Ephemeral home directories:: Ephemeral home directories
* The quick key manipulation interface:: The quick key manipulation interface
* Unattended GPG key generation:: Unattended key generation
@end menu
@node Programmatic use of GnuPG
@subsection Programmatic use of GnuPG
Please consider using GPGME instead of calling @command{@gpgname}
directly. GPGME offers a stable, backend-independent interface for
many cryptographic operations. It supports OpenPGP and S/MIME, and
also allows interaction with various GnuPG components.
GPGME provides a C-API, and comes with bindings for C++, Qt, and
Python. Bindings for other languages are available.
@node Ephemeral home directories
@subsection Ephemeral home directories
Sometimes you want to contain effects of some operation, for example
you want to import a key to inspect it, but you do not want this key
to be added to your keyring. In earlier versions of GnuPG, it was
possible to specify alternate keyring files for both public and secret
keys. In modern GnuPG versions, however, we changed how secret keys
are stored in order to better protect secret key material, and it was
not possible to preserve this interface.
The preferred way to do this is to use ephemeral home directories.
This technique works across all versions of GnuPG.
Create a temporary directory, create (or copy) a configuration that
meets your needs, make @command{@gpgname} use this directory either
using the environment variable @var{GNUPGHOME}, or the option
@option{--homedir}. GPGME supports this too on a per-context basis,
by modifying the engine info of contexts. Now execute whatever
operation you like, import and export key material as necessary. Once
finished, you can delete the directory. All GnuPG backend services
that were started will detect this and shut down.
@node The quick key manipulation interface
@subsection The quick key manipulation interface
Recent versions of GnuPG have an interface to manipulate keys without
using the interactive command @option{--edit-key}. This interface was
added mainly for the benefit of GPGME (please consider using GPGME,
see the manual subsection ``Programmatic use of GnuPG''). This
interface is described in the subsection ``How to manage your keys''.
@node Unattended GPG key generation
@subsection Unattended key generation