Dear Git-Devs, git uses an pipe-and-exec approach to running a GnuPG binary as writen in the documentation [1]:
gpg.program
Use this custom program instead of "gpg" found on $PATH when making
or verifying a PGP signature. The program must support the same
command-line interface as GPG
please consider using libgpgme interfacing to GnuPG, because the gpg
command-line interface is not considered an official API to GnuPG by the
GnuPG-devs and thus potentially unstable.
== Details
I'm involved in GnuPG development. For most applications using libgpgme is the
way what GnuPG-devs would recommend, also see
https://wiki.gnupg.org/APIs .
GnuPG devs are making a good effort of trying to keep the command-line
interface stable, though it is not for sure. Git is only using a small part
of the interface, so the risk when keeping the current way is small.
Still I believe git's stability and usability would profit when moving to
libgpgme, especially with the coming move to GnuPG 2.2, better diagnosing
messages and for cross-plattform usage.
== Usability problem with `gpg2` vs `gpg`
My use case today was signing and git by default found the `gpg` binary by
default and the command failed. The reason is that I have `gpg2` installed
and most applications use it right away. So git failed signing because
the .gnupg configuration of the user was not ready for the old `gpg` which is
still installed on Debian GNU/Linux for purposes of the operating system. If
git would have used libgpgme, gpgme would have choosen the most uptodate
version of `gpg` available (or configured) without me intervening via
gpg.program. Now because of this problem you could adding a check for `gpg2`
and fallback to `gpg`, but even better would be to move to libgpgme. >:)
Best Regards and thanks for maintaining Git as Free Software,
Bernhard
== how to respond
ps: Please copy me on replies as I am not on git@vger.kernel.org.
pps: I've copied gnupg-devel@ so they can see I've send this report, you don't
have to.
[1]
https://github.com/git/git/blob/3bc53220cb2dcf709f7a027a3f526befd021d858/Documentation/config.txt
search for 'gpg.program'.
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