Mac GNU Privacy Guard
[Archives]
4 November 2009: If you want to compile gnupg yourself on a Snow Leopard machine please bear in mind that gnupg only will run in 32bit mode. Thus you will have to compile it for that mode by using the command ./configure CC="gcc -arch i386". We updated the HOWTO Build GnuPG on Mac OS X accordingly.
4 September 2009: Good news and bad news! First the good news: Jonas Schnelli volunteered to dig into the sources of GPGMail trying to make it compatible with Mail 4.0 from Snow Leopard. He definitely would be glad if someone could join him to discuss problems. So if you feel you could contribute please do not hesitate to get in touch with me or join the project GPGMail directly.
The bad news is, that code and libraries seem to be too old to be ported to a 64Bit System. Thus Jonas will aim for a 32Bit version for the time being. The consequence is that you will not be able to use the 64Bit version of Apple's Mail if you want to add encryption funktionalities to it. But I believe we could get over it, couldn't we?
2 days ago version 1.4.10 of GnuPG was announced. For those who cannot wait we updated the HOWTO Build GnuPG on Mac OS X accordingly. May I kindly ask the others to bear with us until we setup an installer for the binaries that also should work on Snow Leopard and backwards.
29 August 2009: First reports confirm what we already could have thought about. GPGMail is not compatible with Snow Leopard due to the fact that Apple changes Mail in every new release of the OS and does not document its changes at all. Unfortunately Stéphane Corthésy – the developer of this most usable software we all are dependant on – will not have the time to dig into the new release of Mail.app in order to change GPGMail accordingly.
So may I kindly encourage skilled developers used to work for Mac OS X and able to cope with undocumented features in Mail.app to take the work over in this project and help the community to still use GPG within Apple's Mail? Please turn to Stéphane directly and ask him how you could contribute. Thank you!
Mac GNU Privacy Guard (Mac GPG for short) is, after a fashion, the Mac OS X port of GnuPG, licensed under the GNU GPL. The aims of the project are to make GnuPG easy to install, develop a framework to make it easy for other developers to incorporate GnuPG functionality into their applications, write services to allow for the use of GnuPG functions in most Cocoa applications, and write a Mac GPG Keys type application so that you no longer have to go to the commandline to manage your keys. For those who don't know, GnuPG is a free OpenPGP client (PGP == Pretty Good Privacy). It can encrypt text (usually e-mail or other messages sent between people) and sign text to prove who wrote it. A further discussion of this can be found elsewhere.
To verify each file, either use the detached sig (but DON'T verify GNU Privacy Guard with itself!) or use the provided MD5 checksum. The easy way to do this is at the command line say 'openssl md5 [filename]' where [filename] is the file you downloaded. You should get the same value you see here. If not, something may be up and you should contact the management.
If you intend to verify the MD5 checksum – as you should – and you are using Safari to download the files please make sure that you switch off the option Open "secure" files after download in the general preferences of Safari and that you calculate the checksum on the originally downloaded files.
- GNU Privacy Guard – From the following list, please select the package that suits your operating system
- For Mac OS X 10.4.x and newer
- GnuPG v2.x, now a separate project.
- 1.4.9, MD5: 36d9eb482a98774521bfd7bb73e4ad06
- For Mac OS X 10.3.x
- 1.4.1, MD5: f4eb3c7d233e18fd1bf56d6bb576bbd9
- For Mac OS X 10.2.x
- 1.2.3, MD5: 2dc5805ddd0c26ce7f3c84f988e6bd5d
- For Mac OS X 10.1.x
- 1.0.7r2, MD5: 664d81cca23cb2801aff9a12d423230b
- GPG Keychain Access – GUI Key Management
- 0.7.0, MD5: 69a9dcd3bd90e9ddf993a368e5181512
- GPGFileTool – Encrypt/Sign/Decrypt/Verify with a GUI
- 1.0.2, MD5: 7212e48839fa4a693d58c671ad74eab2
- GPGDropThing – Quickly use GnuPG on text via GUI
- 0.4.3, MD5: 7dd1add47668ebd3e8342b1cc46ef2f9
- GPGPreferences – Edit GnuPG's options file with a GUI preference pane
- 1.2.2, MD5: e3f0907887ba2fa4618ec1af61ebc344
- Patches
- GPGME.framework
- 1.0.2, MD5: 9f6fc9eb6d36c298c045178703041314
- GPGAppKit
- A1, MD5: bdf8de6fee79e1e6ffe0b8374b283e35
- mac2unix – line ending converter, MD5: 2ffa9c13a1687c7b08fec30b2ead7d08
- TIGER – for GnuPG 1.0.7 – binary for the hash algorithm's dynamic module, MD5: 1e5a53c3295edccd05256a0e4e593e0f
- Nightly CVS tarball
Some of the documentation available Online can be found here on Sourceforge; the rest is below. You should probably read at least some of it (come on, like, we actually spell checked it and stuff).
You might also want to check out zeitform's Configuring GnuPG (Mac OS X). This is the English version of an already great German resource for newbies.
- HOWTO: Build GnuPG on OS X
- 4.18, MD5: 9283d59a311574abb554cb4fb768fb00
- 3.0.1, MD5: b1f149a387b097c43ae045c9d35bcceb
- 2.5, MD5: 9415f9bee7fd046ee99c50a9d6ee0416
- HOWTO: Install IDEA
- 1.4.1, MD5: ab3a357a87f0f40027abe7721e4daab8
- Mac GPG FAQ (RTF format)
- 1.5, MD5: b0224061530001409a00b6cb8879344f
- GPGME Documentation (HTML)
- 050123, MD5: 6459d6cfe2ee1c673e7c8ee01076891d
Developers may want to checkout this book:
Gordon Worley: Programming with GPGME and GPGAppKit on OS X, 2003
There are several lists associated with Mac GPG, all of which are available to the public. The announce list is very low traffic and will let subscribers know when something big happens, like the release of a new version of Mac GPG. There is also a users list for anyone to discuss the use of Mac GPG and also carries any messages sent to announce. If you are having trouble, this is the place to come. Before posting, always check the archives to make sure that something hasn't already been answered. Also, RTFM. If you are writing code that uses GPGME.framework or are a developer on the project, macgpg-devl is the place for you. And, writing of development, to stay up to date on Mac GPG's development, you may want to subscribe to the commits list, which sends out a message every time something is committed to Mac GPG's CVS tree. If you're interested in helping with translations, you'll want to get on macgpg-i18n.
You can contact the project at macgpg@zeitform.de, with this public key. Specific developers can be contactacted as listed below.
In case you haven't figured it out by now, Mac GPG is free software. What this means is that the source code is accessible and free for use by anyone. One aspect of free software is that it is developed openly by a team. If you would like to join the team, send a message to Alexander Nouak (the project's admin), describing how you'd like to help. More than likely, you'll become part of the group. Before you contact me, though, you'll need to make sure that you are signed up with Sourceforge and include your user name in your message. Visit the project page on Sourceforge for more information about the project's development.
You can get all the developers' e-mail addresses and a bit more here.
Here are some important links. Click away.
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Security
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GnuPG
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Home of GNU Privacy Guard.
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MacSecurity.org
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Latest Mac security news.
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Mac Security Site
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Reviews of methods of making the Mac secure.
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Instructions and Documentation
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Configuring GnuPG on Mac OS X
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Illustrated instructions on how to install GnuPG and introduction to the above mentioned tools.
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Project related
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Project Page
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Where to go to see the development.
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Projects using GnuPG on OS X
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GPGMail
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Adds GnuPG support to Apple's Mail.
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Gpg Tools
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Replaces PGPTools under OS X.
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Eudora GPG
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AppleScript scripts to make GnuPG work with Eudora.
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EntourageGPG
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AppleScript scripts to make GnuPG work with Entourage.
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Mailsmith-GPG
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AppleScript scripts to make GnuPG work with Mailsmith.
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ABKey
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The GPG Plugin for Address Book.
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GPGServices
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Mac OS X System Services for GPG.
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