* What's this?
-EasyPG is yet another GnuPG interface for Emacs. It consists of three
-parts: transparent file encryption utility, Gnus/PGG backend, and
-elisp library to interact with GnuPG.
+EasyPG is yet another GnuPG interface for Emacs. It consists of two parts:
-* Requirements
+- "The EasyPG Assistant"
+ A GUI frontend of GnuPG
+- "The EasyPG Library"
+ A library to interact with GnuPG
-** GNU Emacs 21.4 or later
+NOTE: EasyPG is neither a fork nor a re-implementation of PGG.
-** XEmacs 21.4 or later
+* Requirements
-** GnuPG 1.4.3 or later
+** GNU Emacs 21.4 or XEmacs 21.4
-** Gnus 5.10.8 or later (optional)
+** GnuPG 1.4.3
* Quick start
-** Transparent file encryption utility
+** Installation
-EasyPG provides transparent file encryption utility similar to
-crypt++, alpaca.el, hedgehog. To try this feature, add the following
-line to your ~/.emacs and C-x C-f ~/test.txt.gpg.
+ $ ./configure
+ $ sudo make install
-(require 'epg-file)
+Add the following line to your ~/.emacs
-** Gnus/PGG backend
+ (require 'epa-setup)
-EasyPG provides an implementation of the backend interface of
-Gnus/PGG. To use EasyPG instead of pgg-gpg, install pgg-epg.el and
-add the following line to your ~/.gnus.
+Then you can browse your keyring by `M-x epa-list-keys'. In addition,
+you can do some cryptographic operations on dired.
-(setq pgg-scheme 'epg)
+ M-x dired
+ (mark some files)
+ : e (or M-x epa-dired-do-encrypt)
+ (select recipients and click [OK])
-* Advantages over other competitors
+* Security
-There are many competitors of EasyPG such as Mailcrypt, PGG, gpg.el,
-etc. EasyPG has some advantages over them.
+There are security pitfalls around Emacs.
-** EasyPG avoides potential security flaws of Emacs.
+** Passphrase may leak to a temporary file.
-*** `call-process-region' writes data in region to temporary files.
+`call-process-region' writes data in region to a temporary file.
+The EasyPG Library does not use `call-process-region' to communicate with a gpg
+subprocess.
-`call-process-region' writes data in region to temporary files. PGG
-and gpg.el use `call-process-region' to communicate with a gpg
-subprocess. Your passphrases leak to the filesystem!
+** Passphrase may be stolen from a core file.
-*** There is no way to clear strings safely.
-
-If Emacs crashed and dumps core, passphrase strings in memory are also
+If Emacs crashes and dumps core, Lisp strings in memory are also
dumped within the core file. `read-passwd' function clears passphrase
strings by `(fillarray string 0)'. However, Emacs performs compaction
in gc_sweep phase. If GC happens before `fillarray', passphrase
-strings may be moved elsewhere in memory. It is recommended that as
-soon as you are done with passphrase you should clear it manually.
-However, PGG and gpg.el can keep passphrase strings in cache for a
-while and this behavior is their default!
-
-** GnuPG features are directly accessible from Emacs
-
-Other competitors provide only specific features of GnuPG since they
-still support PGP 2.*, 5.*, 6.*. As the name indicates, EasyPG is
-inspired by GPGME (GnuPG Made Easy), and the library interface is
-close to GPGME. With EasyPG you can benefit from a lot of features of
-GnuPG.
+strings may be moved elsewhere in memory. Therefore, passphrase
+caching in elisp is generally a bad idea.
+
+The EasyPG Library dares to disable passphrase caching. Fortunately,
+there is more secure way to cache passphrases - use gpg-agent. Elisp
+programs can set `epg-context-passphrase-callback' to cache user's
+passphrases, it is not recommended though.