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eikenberry01/21/20251 replyview on HN

I recently implemented a software updating system using [The Update Framework](https://theupdateframework.io/) directly, with [go-tuf](https://github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf). It required a lot of design work around how we were going to do package management on top of using it for a secure updating system. This was due to TUF's designing around the capability for existing package management systems to adopt it and integrate it into their system. So TUF is very unopinionated and flexible.

Given how TUF made it particularly hard to implement a system from scratch... How was your experience using Sigstore? Is it designed more around building systems from scratch? I.E. Is it more opinionated?

Thanks.


Replies

arccy01/22/2025

TUF is much more comprehensive than what sigstore/cosign offers. at the core for sigtore/cosign are just the primitives for sign a blob / container and maybe some extra metadata, and for verifying the blob / container / metadata. there are other integrations that will also attach and sign a SBOM etc, but it's not necessary, so you can build something very simple such as: artifacts only signed by this key when it's run via ci on master, and deployments must run using artifacts signed with said key.

sigstore is also a transparency log which you can check the signature against, but it's not really necessary, good for public things, you probably don't need it for private / company stuff.