[Botan-announce] Botan 1.3.0

[Jack L. <ll...@ra...>]

The first release of the new development tree, 1.3.0, is available. I've
removed a few algorithms (CS-Cipher, SHARK, ThreeWay, MD5-MAC, and EMAC); most
are rarely, if ever, used, and some are patented as well. I also killed off a
few random functions and constructors I didn't feel were too useful. Support
for GCC pre-3.0 is officially deprecated (but not removed); there have been
some hacks and workarounds in place specifically to support 2.95.x that I
wouldn't mind removing. Given that modern Linux, *BSD, and OS X systems all
seem to be using at least 3.0.4, now seems as good a time as any.

The primary interface for loading PKCS #8 private key files has been changed
around somewhat, necessitating a complete redesign of how it works internally
(meaning there are probably bugs). Before, opening an encrypted private key was
all or nothing - either the passphrase was right, and it worked, or it was
wrong, and you would have to do the whole thing over again with another
passphrase. Now it will keep asking you for passphrases until one works, or you
(more properly, the User_Interface object that represents you) says "forget it"
and cancels the action. Speaking of that, there is a new User_Interface
hierarchy that handles talking to 'you'. It's basically just a way to glue
together Botan and whatever form of GUI or console interface you happen to be
using, in the (thankfully rare) places where that is useful. The default UI
doesn't even talk to you, it first just tries to give the passphrase passed to
it's constructor, and if that doesn't work, then it cancels the action. This is
a) for compatibility with how 1.2.x did it, and b) because I don't even want to
touch UI issues if I can help it, thankyouverymuch.

The looks-minor-but-isn't change in this release is that you no longer have to
tell Botan if an object is PEM encoded or not - it can figure it out on it's
own. This includes X.509 public keys, certificates, and CRLs, PKCS #8 private
keys, and PKCS #10 certificate requests. This is (or at least can be) more
handy than it probably sounds like. For most people, who have just been using
the default of PEM, the only change is that now your application will read BER
encoded data where it couldn't before. If you were telling it PEM or RAW_BER
explicitly, just remove it and everything will work just like it did (except
better).

Jack