KeePass
Password Safe

Development Status FAQ


Is KeePass 1.x a dead end?

No. KeePass 1.x will continue to be supported indefinitely.

If you are using KeePass 1.x on an older system where KeePass 2.x doesn't run, simply continue using it. KeePass 1.x will still be supported for a long time.


Why is KeePass 2.x being developed?

Looking at the user feature requests, it becomes clear very soon that a complete rewrite of KeePass 1.x is required in order to implement the suggested things.

For example, the complete core of KeePass 1.x is based on the fixed fields as seen in the 'Edit Entry' window. Implementing custom strings fields in 1.x would require such a lot of work that you can also rewrite it completely from scratch. Other examples are support for real synchronization, improved auto-type system, real entry history, supporting more key sources for building the master key, multiple attachments per entry, database compression, better plugin system, etc.


Will KeePass 1.x continue to be enhanced with new features?

Yes. However, KeePass 1.x will not support all the features that 2.x supports. The reason 2.x was created is that there simply are features that can't be implemented into 1.x with a reasonable amount of work (see above). For example, password generator improvements will be made in 1.x, but the entry history will only appear in 2.x.


Why has .NET been chosen as a framework for KeePass 2.x?

When it was clear that a complete rewrite is required, we carefully thought about what language and framework to use. We chose .NET because of security and integration features, productivity, and portability.


How does .NET improve security and integration?

While these seem to be achievable with all languages at first glance (in all modern programming languages you can implement AES/Rijndael), it turns out to be a real criteria. It for example is pretty hard to implement things like memory protection, auto-type, system-wide hot keys, etc. in Java. Of course, it is possible, but Java just isn't designed for that. Also, you'd need to install the Java runtime. There should be as few dependencies as possible (see portability).

.NET supports security features that are not available in other frameworks. For example, Code Access Security (CAS) allows protection of resources and operations on a level that currently can't be found in any other framework; in corporate environments, assembly signing allows trusting official KeePass versions only; etc.


How does .NET improve productivity?

Productivity means that you can implement features / fix bugs faster, while producing similar or even higher code quality. Let's have a look at an example: adding compression functionality. If you want to do this using unmanaged C++, you'd first need to search for a library to do that. After finding the very stable ZLib, you'll need to learn it. You'll write some wrapper class for it, handling all the raw buffer processing. In contrast, you can compress a stream in .NET using one line of code. Of course this doesn't mean that you can do "more" in .NET than you can in unmanaged non-.NET code in terms of functionality (you could also write KeePass in pure assembler), but features can be implemented faster and the code usually is more reliable.


How does .NET improve portability?

All Windows operating systems starting with Vista ship with .NET preinstalled. Here, KeePass 2.x runs fine from USB sticks without having to install it and without any additional prerequisites.

For Windows XP and earlier, .NET is available and can be installed by the user (usually it's already installed, e.g. using Windows Update). As the mainstream support of Windows XP has already ended on 2009-04-14 and the extended support on 2014-04-08, XP in the meanwhile is irrelevant for portability.

The portable / cross-platform future of .NET is very bright. It allows the same codebase to be used on completely unrelated systems, like Windows PCs, smart devices (PocketPC, Smartphone, etc.) and even other operating systems like Linux and MacOS through open .NET runtimes like Mono. All major features are available on Mono (Linux, MacOS, ...), too (especially global auto-type). For most Linux systems, Mono is offered as a package; it's even already included in the GNOME ≥ 2.16 desktop.


Will there be a KeePass 2.x version that won't require the .NET Framework?

No. KeePass 2.x is written completely in C# using the .NET Framework. No chance to make it independent of .NET.


Should I switch to KeePass 2.x now?

If you'd like to take advantage of the unique features of 2.x, then yes. Otherwise, just stay with 1.x.


What are KeePass Classic and KeePass Professional?

During the initial development of 2.x (i.e. while there was no public alpha version available), it was called "KeePass Professional". The current 1.x version should be renamed to "KeePass Classic". This naming should emphasize that 2.x isn't simply the successor of 1.x. Shortly before the first alpha version was released, there were long discussions about the naming and we finally decided to call the new version "2.x".

This was done particularly with regard to future development. The naming was changed, but the intention remains the same: 2.x isn't the successor of 1.x, and 1.x isn't dead.






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