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author | Niels Möller <nisse@lysator.liu.se> | 2001-09-05 16:43:26 +0200 |
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committer | Niels Möller <nisse@lysator.liu.se> | 2001-09-05 16:43:26 +0200 |
commit | 9ec8ce346d985b97f401dfc5f9a8c6f03b2d6fc1 (patch) | |
tree | dda2c9210fbbc3456e8581a2b097725bfc0e3099 /README | |
parent | 20861af88de7c1a0ab0a0609fe9171a52351e10d (diff) | |
download | nettle-9ec8ce346d985b97f401dfc5f9a8c6f03b2d6fc1.tar.gz |
Copied introduction from the manual.
Rev: src/nettle/README:1.2
Diffstat (limited to 'README')
-rw-r--r-- | README | 32 |
1 files changed, 32 insertions, 0 deletions
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +What is Nettle? A quote from the introduction in the Nettle Manual: + + Nettle is a cryptographic library that is designed to fit easily in more + or less any context: In crypto toolkits for object-oriented languages + (C++, Python, Pike, ...), in applications like LSH or GNUPG, or even in + kernel space. In most contexts, you need more than the basic + cryptographic algorithms, you also need some way to keep track of available + algorithms, their properties and variants. You often have some algorithm + selection process, often dictated by a protocol you want to implement. + + And as the requirements of applications differ on subtle and not so + subtle ways, an API that fits one application well can be a pain to use + in a different context. And that is why there are so many different + cryptographic libraries around. + + Nettle tries to avoid this problem by doing one thing, the low-level + crypto stuff, and providing a @emph{simple} but general interface to it. + In particular, Nettle doesn't do algorithm selection. It doesn't do + memory allocation. It doesn't do any I/O. + + The idea is that one can build several application and context specific + interfaces on top of Nettle, and share the code, testcases, banchmarks, + documentation, etc. For this first version, the only application using + Nettle is LSH, and it uses an object-oriented abstraction on top of the + library. + +Build nettle with the usual ./configure && make && make check && make +install. Read the manual. Mail me if you have any questions or +suggestions. + +Happy hacking, +/Niels Möller <nisse@lysator.liu.se> |