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Diffstat (limited to 'doc/DETAILS')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/DETAILS | 39 |
1 files changed, 39 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/DETAILS b/doc/DETAILS index ba66248ec..11a540af6 100644 --- a/doc/DETAILS +++ b/doc/DETAILS @@ -241,6 +241,10 @@ more arguments in future versions. POLICY_URL <string> string is %XX escaped + BEGIN_STREAM + END_STREAM + Issued by pipemode. + Key generation ============== @@ -669,6 +673,41 @@ Usage of gdbm files for keyrings +Pipemode +======== +This mode can be used to perform multiple operations with one call to +gpg. It comes handy in cases where you have to verify a lot of +signatures. Currently we support only detached signatures. This mode +is a kludge to avoid running gpg n daemon mode and using Unix Domain +Sockets to pass the data to it. There is no easy portable way to do +this under Windows, so we use plain old pipes which do work well under +Windows. Because there is no way to signal multiple EOFs in a pipe we +have to embed control commands in the data stream: We distinguish +between a data state and a control state. Initially the system is in +data state but it won't accept any data. Instead it waits for +transition to control state which is done by sending a single '@' +character. While in control state the control command os expected and +this command is just a single byte after which the system falls back +to data state (but does not necesary accept data now). The simplest +control command is a '@' which just inserts this character into the +data stream. + +Here is the format we use for detached signatures: +"@<" - Begin of new stream +"@B" - Detached signature follows. + This emits a control packet (1,'B') +detached_signature +"@t" - Signed text follows. + This emits the control packet (2, 'B') +signed_text +"@." - End of operation. The final control packet forces signature + verification +"@>" - End of stream + + + + + Other Notes =========== |