GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 734710
Upgrade gnutls version to 3.x in modulesets targetting 3.14 and above
Last modified: 2014-08-14 18:23:54 UTC
Next release of WebKitGTK+ will depend on gnutls 3.0. Currently, support for the WebCryptography API <http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/> is being added and will be based on 3.0 version of the gnutls API. Hence, modulesets that target GNOME 3.14 and above need to bump version of gnutls. Why 3.0 is required and not the current 2.12? Gnutls prior to 3.0 uses libgcrypt to handle low-level crypto, while 3.0 and above uses nettle <http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/nettle/>. Support for new algorithms and bug fixing in gnutls happens in 3.0, while 2.12 is just (barely) maintained. Hence, it is a safe-bet for WebKitGTK+ development to base its features in gnutls+nettle instead. Gnutls 3.0 is a fairly old release now (2012) and is shipped in stable versions of most distros. So it should be safe to assume its availability in the system.
Makes sense, I went ahed and upgraded to 3.1, as seems its the oldest maintained version and still old enough commit 28667927d9cc505254c560df3ca95d61781d0394 Thanks for your bug report