Pluto and GMP

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

[Oops: I forwarded my first message to the list, assuming that it
never got there.  I now see that Werner beat me to the punch.]

| From: Werner Koch <wk@gnupg.org>
| Subject: Re: Hello?

| > I'm trying to make dsa.c/elgamal.c work with GMP because that is what
| > we use for big integers.  We use it because we use libdes (Eric
| > Young's old code) and libdes uses GMP.  What a tangle.
| 
| libdes needs big integers - it is not the one from OpenSSL I guess.

Oops, sorry, I got that wrong.  We use GMP because that is what we
started with.  libdes does not use it.

GMP does have the advantage that it is already a library.

We can switch to soomething else, but I'd rather not keep switching!

Some people are currently using patches to Pluto to use OpenSSL.  So
there is a pull towards its bignum package, or at least not
conflicting with it.  Do you know whether gcrypt will be happy to
co-exist in the same program as (parts of) OpenSSL?

If your big number package is better than GMP, is there a chance you
can make it a stand-alone library, separate from gcrypt?  Could it
then supplant GMP in general?  Or is your library not better for all
uses?

Thanks,

Hugh Redelmeier
hugh@mimosa.com  voice: +1 416 482-8253