gnupg/doc/HACKING

		      A Hacker's Guide to GNUPG
		   ================================
		   (Some notes on GNUPG internals.)


		   ===> Under construction <=======


CVS Access
==========
Anonymous read-only CVS access is available:

  cvs -z6 -d :pserver:anonymous@ftp.guug.de:/home/koch/cvs login

use the password "anonymous".  To check out the the complete
archive use:

  cvs -z6 -d :pserver:anonymous@ftp.guug.de:/home/koch/cvs checkout gnupg

This service is provided to help you in hunting bugs and not to deliver
stable snapshots; it may happen that it even does not compile, so please
don't complain. CVS may put a high load on a server, so please don't poll
poll for new updates but wait for an announcement; to receive this you may
want to subscribe to:

    gnupg-commit-watchers@gnupg.org

by sending a mail with subject "subscribe" to

    gnupg-commit-watchers-request@gnupg.org


Please run scripts/autogen.sh to create some required files.


RSYNC access
============
The FTP archive is also available by anonymous rsync.  A daily snapshot
of the CVS head revision is also available.  See rsync(1) and try
"rsync ftp.gnupg.org::" to see available resources.



RFCs
====

1423  Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
      Part III: Algorithms, Modes, and Identifiers.

1489  Registration of a Cyrillic Character Set.

1750  Randomness Recommendations for Security.

1991  PGP Message Exchange Formats.

2015  MIME Security with Pretty Good Privacy (PGP).

2144  The CAST-128 Encryption Algorithm.

2279  UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646.

2440  OpenPGP.



Debug Flags
-----------
Use the option "--debug n" to output debug information. This option
can be used multiple times, all values are ORed; n maybe prefixed with
0x to use hex-values.

     value  used for
     -----  ----------------------------------------------
      1     packet reading/writing
      2     MPI details
      4     ciphers and primes (may reveal sensitive data)
      8     iobuf filter functions
      16    iobuf stuff
      32    memory allocation stuff
      64    caching
      128   show memory statistics at exit
      256   trust verification stuff




Directory Layout
----------------
  ./		Readme, configure
  ./scripts	Scripts needed by configure and others
  ./doc 	Documentation
  ./util	General purpose utility function
  ./mpi 	Multi precision integer library
  ./cipher	Cryptographic functions
  ./g10 	GnuPG application
  ./tools	Some helper and demo programs
  ./keybox	The keybox library (under construction)
  ./gcrypt	Stuff needed to build libgcrypt (under construction)





Memory allocation
-----------------
Use only the functions:

    m_alloc()
    m_alloc_clear()
    m_strdup()
    m_free()

If you want to store a passphrase or some other sensitive data you may
want to use m_alloc_secure() instead of m_alloc(), as this puts the data
into a memory region which is protected from swapping (on some platforms).
m_free() works for both.  This functions will not return if there is not
enough memory available.



Logging
-------






Option parsing
---------------
GNUPG does not use getopt or GNU getopt but functions of it's own.  See
util/argparse.c for details.  The advantage of these functions is that
it is more easy to display and maintain the help texts for the options.
The same option table is also used to parse resource files.



What is an IOBUF
----------------
This is the data structure used for most I/O of gnupg.	It is similar
to System V Streams but much simpler.  Because OpenPGP messages are nested
in different ways; the use of such a system has big advantages.  Here is
an example, how it works:  If the parser sees a packet header with a partial
length, it pushes the block_filter onto the IOBUF to handle these partial
length packets: from now on you don't have to worry about this.  When it sees
a compressed packet it pushes the uncompress filter and the next read byte
is one which has already been uncompressed by this filter. Same goes for
enciphered packet, plaintext packets and so on.  The file g10/encode.c
might be a good staring point to see how it is used  - actually this is
the other way: constructing messages using pushed filters but it may be
easier to understand.


How to use the message digest functions
---------------------------------------
cipher/md.c implements an interface to hash (message digest functions).

a) If you have a common part of data and some variable parts
   and you need to hash of the concatenated parts, you can use this:
	md = md_open(...)
	md_write( md,  common_part )
	md1 = md_copy( md )
	md_write(md1, part1)
	md_final(md1);
	digest1 = md_read(md1)
	md2 = md_copy( md )
	md_write(md2, part2)
	md_final(md2);
	digest2 = md_read(md2)

   An example are key signatures; the key packet is the common part
   and the user-id packets are the variable parts.

b) If you need a running digest you should use this:
	md = md_open(...)
	md_write( md, part1 )
	digest_of_part1 = md_digest( md );
	md_write( md, part2 )
	digest_of_part1_cat_part2 = md_digest( md );
	....

Both methods may be combined. [Please see the source for the real syntax]




How to use the cipher functions
-------------------------------
cipher/cipher.c implements the interface to symmetric encryption functions.
As usual you have a function to open a cipher (which returns a handle to be used
with all other functions), some functions to set the key and other stuff and
a encrypt and decrypt function which does the real work.  YOu probably know
how to work with files - so it should really be easy to work with these
functions.  Here is an example:

    CIPHER_HANDLE hd;

    hd = cipher_open( CIPHER_ALGO_TWOFISH, CIPHER_MODE_CFB, 0 );
    if( !hd )
	oops( use other funtion to check for the real error );
    rc = cipher_setkey( hd, key256bit, 32 ) )
    if( rc )
	oops( weak key or something like this );
    cipher_setiv( hd, some_IV_or_NULL_for_all_zeroes );
    cipher_encrypt( hd, plain, cipher, size );
    cipher_close( hd );



How to use the public key functions
-----------------------------------
cipher/pubkey.c implements the interface to asymmetric encryption and
signature functions. This is basically the same as with the symmetric
counterparts, but due to their nature it is a little bit more complicated.

   [Give an example]