gnome-keyring API Migration

[Stef Walter <stef-list memberwebs com>]

As posted here previously, KDE and GNOME developers are working together
on a new DBus based API for storing secrets [1].

I'm working hard to implement this new API in gnome-keyring, while we're
finalizing it. It contains many beneficial changes, and lessons learned.
You can join in on the discussion on the XDG mailing list [2].

It's very likely that there will be a new client side library which
wraps this DBus API.

The current libgnome-keyring.so will be probably be replaced by
compatibility shims. These shims would be distributed separately from
the gnome-keyring distribution. This library would eventually be deprecated.

The current (undocumented, unstable, private) binary protocol that
gnome-keyring-daemon and libgnome-keyring speak to each other will go
away. It's grown crufty and hard to extend. The DBus based secrets API
is the future.

Migration Effort:

 * Most normal applications using libgnome-keyring will have almost
   no immediate migration needed, due to the compatibility shims.
 * Module packagers may need to update dependencies.
 * Patches will be contributed to seahorse, gnome-session,
   gnome-power-manager and any others that interact with gnome-keyring
   in unique ways.
 * Parts of java-gnome and gnome-sharp and any others who talk to
   gnome-keyring using the unsupported private binary protocol
   will need to be rewritten by their developers.

We're working hard to finish all this by 2.30 (ie: 3.0), but that's
pretty soon. It'd be awesome if 2.30 was a 9 month cycle.

Cheers,

Stef

[1] http://www.gnome.org/~stefw/secrets/html/
[2] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/authentication