NEWS for the 2.0 release

This release breaks binary compatibility by splitting the library into two. Some other smaller changes that are not backwards compatible are also done at the same time.

* The nettle library is split into two libraries, libnettle and libhogweed. libnettle contains the symmetric crypto algorithms that don't depend on GMP, while libhogweed contains the public key algorithms that depend on GMP. Using a single library worked fine with static linking, but not with dynamic linking. Consider an application that uses nettle and which doesn't use any public key cryptography. If this application is linked dynamically to nettle, it would have to be linked also with GMP if and only if public key support was enabled when the nettle library was installed.

The library names are libnettle.so.3.0 and libhogweed.so.1.0, with sonames libnettle.so.3 and libhogweed.so.1.

* Function typedefs have been changed to non-pointer types. E.g, the

typedef void (nettle_hash_init_func *)(void *ctx);

of previous versions is replaced by

typedef void (nettle_hash_init_func)(void *ctx);

This makes it possible to use the type when declaring functions, like

nettle_hash_init_func foo_hash_init;

void foo_hash_init(void *ctx) { ... }

* Changes to the yarrow256 interface. The automatic seed file generation, and the seed_file member in struct yarrow256_ctx, has been removed. To generate a new seed file, use yarrow256_random. The function yarrow256_force_reseed has been replaced by the two functions yarrow256_fast_reseed and yarrow256_slow_reseed, which were previously static. This interface change makes it easier to mix in the current content of the seed file before overwriting it with newly generated data.

Other changes:

* Nettle manual now contributed to the public domain, to enable remixing into documentation of programs that use Nettle.

* The sexp-conv program preserves comments when using the advanced syntax for output. Optionally locks the output file.

* The base64 decoder recognizes ASCII FF (form feed) and VT (vertical tab) as white space.

* New x86_64 implementations of AES and SHA1. On a 2.2 GHz opteron, SHA1 was benchmarked at 250 MByte/s, and AES-128 at 110 MByte/s.

* Performance of AES increased by 20-30% on x86.

* New programs in the examples directory: erathostenes and next-prime.

Available at

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/archive/nettle-2.0.tar.gz ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/security/lsh/nettle-2.0.tar.gz

as usual.

Regards, /Niels