Re: Will Ada-95 Programs Written in MS Windows Run in MacOS and Linux Without Some Tweaking.

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

Austin Obyrne <austin.obyrne@hotmail.com> writes:

> The transition of this crypto from Windows to Mac is quite something
> and to my limited experience is a formidable task.

No.

I've put extensions at [1]; the README.txt says

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The files here are intended to work with the SureCrypt software from
http://www.adacryptpages.com. They are written against version 85610,
and are relatively minor modifications of that software, so the
copyright status remains that of the original (Copyright © 2003 Austin
O'Byrne).

There are two new programs: encrypt and decrypt.

Encrypt usage:

   encrypt original-plaintext ciphertext

Decrypt usage:

   decrypt ciphertext decrypted-plaintext

Note that in spite of the use of the word "text" above the programs
will work with binary data.

The programs will work on Unix and Windows systems. Data encrypted on
one can be decrypted on the other if required.

Using a recent GNAT compiler, the programs can be built using the
supplied cipher.gpr:

   gnatmake -p -P cipher

Simon Wright
simon@pushface.org
December 2013
------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the software point of view, note that on Linux (which has a
case-sensitive file system) you should use lower case for Ada source
file names, so that, for example, Alices_Digital_Signature.ads becomes
alices_digital_signature.ads.

From the practical point of view, I think that the size of the encrypted
files will be a serious issue. With the current code, they come out
*more* *than* *30* *times* the size of the original, so that the
encrypted SureCrypt85610.zip comes out at about 870 megabytes. Even if
you output the encrypted data in binary the multiplier will be 12 (each
byte of the original is encrypted as 3 integers).

[1] https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a84i0jb8jv48nev/Q143ubNUWC