= GPGME - the API to GnuPG

The recommended way to use the ~GnuPG crypto stack from your application is ~G~PGME, which is written in C.
Here is the [[https://www.gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gpgme/|online version of the manual]].

A number of ~G~PGME bindings for other programming languages/environments exist
(Please point us to missing entries or corrections or add them directly in the wiki.):

== All / C ==

 * [[https://www.gnupg.org/gpgme.html|gpgme]] (~GPG Made Easy) is the official GnuPG API. 
It is implemented in C itself, but this is what you should use from your language as well.

=== official GPGME bindings

Coming with official [[https://gnupg.org/software/gpgme/index.html|GPGME releases]]
are bindings for:

 * **C++**: Based upon the code previously maintained by KDE.
 * **Qt**: Based upon the code previously maintained by KDE.
 * **Python**: Based upon the 'pyme' bindings, should be backwards compatible.
 * **Common Lisp**

The current development versions can be found at
[[https://git.gnupg.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gpgme.git;a=tree;f=lang|git.gnupg.org gpgme/lang]].

The GnuPG-Team supports these bindings.

=== Examples for how to use the bindings

* https://gitlab.com/reiterl/python3-gpg-examples (Python)
* https://heptapod.host/intevation/gnupg/gnupg-scripts/-/tree/main/Python (Python)

=== Third-party GPGME bindings

==== C++ wrappers
 * http://quickgit.kde.org/?p=kdepimlibs.git gpgme++ is a wrapper for gpgme in kdepimlibs


==== C# (c-sharp) wrappers
 * [[https://github.com/wget/gpgme-sharp|gpgme-sharp]]. It is [[https://www.nuget.org/packages/gpgme-sharp|available on NuGet]] and supports .NET Core
   The code quality was considered "experimental" and made for 32bits for Windows,
   but [[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4156819/using-the-gpgme-library-from-net|some reported success]].

==== Java wrappers

* [[https://github.com/guardianproject/gnupg-for-java|GnuPG-for-Java]] is a Java wrapper for gpgme >=1.5 and GnuPG >=2.x
* [[https://github.com/smartrevolution/gnupg-for-java|GnuPG-for-Java]] is a Java wrapper for gpgme and GnuPG 1.x
* [[https://github.com/guardianproject/gnupg-for-android|Gnu Privacy Guard]] is an Android app based [[https://github.com/guardianproject/gnupg-for-java|GnuPG-for-Java]] and uses gpgme to provide a GnuPG engine in Android


==== PHP wrappers
 * https://pecl.php.net/package/gnupg


==== Python wrappers
**Use official python-gpg bindings from GPG~ME** based on Py~ME, see above.
We just document historic alternatives here:

 * Py~ME history:  see 
[[https://git.gnupg.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gpgme.git;a=blob;f=lang/python/README|README of current python3-gpg bindings]].

 * A different approach (last release from 2012) is https://launchpad.net/pygpgme , manually written wrapper in C for python2 and python3. GNU ~LGPL v?=2. Packaged for Debian and Ubuntu.


==== Ruby wrappers ==

* [[https://github.com/ueno/ruby-gpgme|ruby-gpgme]] is a ruby wrapper, which can be installed with: gem install gpgme.


==== Rust wrappers ====

* [[https://github.com/gpg-rs/gpgme|gpgm-rs]]


= (not recommended) calling executables directly =

A number of elder applications call ~GnuPG executables in a subprocess and interact with them via command line arguments and file-descriptors.
This is less perferable to ~G~PGME, because the  
**command line arguments and text outputs are not an (official) API** to ~G~nuPG. While there
is an effort made to keep them stable, using the official ~G~PGME API can manage this more precisely and thus you end up with a more robust solution.

==== C# (c-sharp)
* [[https://github.com/WilliamDunne/SharpGPG|SharpGPG]] a GPG wrapper for C# using GPGAPI.

==== Objective-C
* [[https://github.com/GPGTools/Libmacgpg|Libmacgpg]] is a Mac OS X Framework built on top of GnuPG (but not gpgme), used as part of the [[https://gpgtools.org/|GPGTools suite]].

==== PHP
* https://pear.php.net/package/Crypt_GPG seems to call the gpg binary directly.
  (probably cannot do S/MIME then).

==== Python 
* [[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/python-gnupg|python-gnupg]] using the subprocess module to call the gpg executables (not using the recommended gpgme for python alternatives, see above). Xorg Style license.