gnupg/announce.txt

To: gnupg-announce@gnupg.org, info-gnu@gnu.org
Mail-Followup-To: gnupg-users@gnupg.org


Hello!

We are pleased to announce the availability of a new stable GnuPG-2
release:  Version 2.0.17.

The GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) is GNU's tool for secure communication
and data storage.  It can be used to encrypt data, create digital
signatures, help authenticating using Secure Shell and to provide a
framework for public key cryptography.  It includes an advanced key
management facility and is compliant with the OpenPGP and S/MIME
standards.

GnuPG-2 has a different architecture than GnuPG-1 (e.g. 1.4.11) in
that it splits up functionality into several modules.  However, both
versions may be installed alongside without any conflict.  In fact,
the gpg version from GnuPG-1 is able to make use of the gpg-agent as
included in GnuPG-2 and allows for seamless passphrase caching.  The
advantage of GnuPG-1 is its smaller size and the lack of dependency on
other modules at run and build time.  We will keep maintaining GnuPG-1
versions because they are very useful for small systems and for server
based applications requiring only OpenPGP support.

GnuPG is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License
(GPL version 3).  GnuPG-2 works best on GNU/Linux or *BSD systems.


What's New
===========

 * Allow more hash algorithms with the OpenPGP v2 card.

 * The gpg-agent now tests for a new gpg-agent.conf on a HUP.

 * Fixed output of "gpgconf --check-options".

 * Fixed a bug where Scdaemon sends a signal to Gpg-agent running in
   non-daemon mode.

 * Fixed TTY management for pinentries and session variable update
   problem.

 * Minor bug fixes.


Getting the Software
====================

Please follow the instructions found at http://www.gnupg.org/download/
or read on:

GnuPG 2.0.17 may be downloaded from one of the GnuPG mirror sites or
direct from ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gnupg/ .  The list of mirrors
can be found at http://www.gnupg.org/mirrors.html .  Note, that GnuPG
is not available at ftp.gnu.org.

On the FTP server and its mirrors you should find the following files
in the gnupg/ directory:

  gnupg-2.0.17.tar.bz2 (3904k)
  gnupg-2.0.17.tar.bz2.sig

      GnuPG source compressed using BZIP2 and OpenPGP signature.

  gnupg-2.0.16-2.0.17.diff.bz2 (75k)

      A patch file to upgrade a 2.0.16 GnuPG source tree.  This patch
      does not include updates of the language files.

Note, that we don't distribute gzip compressed tarballs for GnuPG-2. 


Checking the Integrity
======================

In order to check that the version of GnuPG which you are going to
install is an original and unmodified one, you can do it in one of
the following ways:

 * If you already have a trusted version of GnuPG installed, you
   can simply check the supplied signature.  For example to check the
   signature of the file gnupg-2.0.17.tar.bz2 you would use this command:

     gpg --verify gnupg-2.0.17.tar.bz2.sig

   This checks whether the signature file matches the source file.
   You should see a message indicating that the signature is good and
   made by that signing key.  Make sure that you have the right key,
   either by checking the fingerprint of that key with other sources
   or by checking that the key has been signed by a trustworthy other
   key.  Note, that you can retrieve the signing key using the command

     finger wk ,at' g10code.com

   or using a keyserver like

     gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 4F25E3B6

   The distribution key 4F25E3B6 is signed by the well known key
   1E42B367.

   NEVER USE A GNUPG VERSION YOU JUST DOWNLOADED TO CHECK THE
   INTEGRITY OF THE SOURCE - USE AN EXISTING GNUPG INSTALLATION!

 * If you are not able to use an old version of GnuPG, you have to verify
   the SHA-1 checksum.  Assuming you downloaded the file
   gnupg-2.0.17.tar.bz2, you would run the sha1sum command like this:

     sha1sum gnupg-2.0.17.tar.bz2

   and check that the output matches the first line from the
   following list:

41ef5460417ca0a1131fc730849fe3afd49ad2de  gnupg-2.0.17.tar.bz2
ba49d5ab2659bfe6403d52df58722f439e393bbb  gnupg-2.0.16-2.0.17.diff.bz2


Internationalization
====================

GnuPG comes with support for 27 languages.  Due to a lot of new and
changed strings many translations are not entirely complete.  Jakub
Bogusz, Petr Pisar, Jedi and Daniel Nylander have been kind enough to
update their translations on short notice.  Thus the Chinese, Czech,
German, Polish and Swedish translations are complete.


Documentation
=============

We are currently working on an installation guide to explain in more
detail how to configure the new features.  As of now the chapters on
gpg-agent and gpgsm include brief information on how to set up the
whole thing.  Please watch the GnuPG website for updates of the
documentation.  In the meantime you may search the GnuPG mailing list
archives or ask on the gnupg-users mailing lists for advise on how to
solve problems.  Many of the new features are around for several years
and thus enough public knowledge is already available.  KDE's KMail is
the most prominent user of GnuPG-2.  In fact it has been developed along
with the KMail folks.  Mutt users might want to use the configure
option "--enable-gpgme" and "set use_crypt_gpgme" in ~/.muttrc to make
use of GnuPG-2 to enable S/MIME in addition to a reworked OpenPGP
support.

The manual is also available online in HTML format at
  http://www.gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg/ 
and in Portable Document Format at
  http://www.gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg.pdf .


Support
=======

Improving GnuPG is costly, but you can help!  We are looking for
organizations that find GnuPG useful and wish to contribute back.  
You can contribute by reporting bugs, improve the software, order
extensions or support or more general by donating money to the Free
Software movement (e.g. http://www.fsfeurope.org/help/donate.en.html).

Commercial support contracts for GnuPG are available, and they help
finance continued maintenance.  g10 Code GmbH, a Duesseldorf based
company owned and headed by GnuPG's principal author, is currently
funding GnuPG development.  We are always looking for interesting
development projects.

The GnuPG service directory is available at:

  http://www.gnupg.org/service.html


Thanks
======

We have to thank all the people who helped with this release, be it
testing, coding, translating, suggesting, auditing, administering the
servers, spreading the word or answering questions on the mailing
lists.  


Happy Hacking,

  The GnuPG Team