[Pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#501630: gnupg: breaks symlink for secret keyring

[Ian Zimmerman]

Package: gnupg
Version: 1.4.9-3
Severity: normal

The GNU Privacy Handbook says:

        Safely storing your private key is important, but there is a cost.
        Ideally, you would keep the private key on a removable, write-protected
        disk such as a floppy disk, and you would use it on a single-user
        machine not connected to a network.

However, it turns out gpg makes following this advice hard.  If ~/.gnupg/secring.gpg
is a symlink (in my case, to a file on a USB fob), and the keyring changes
(for example, deleting a public-private key pair), gpg breaks the symlink and creates
a new file where the symlink was, instead of modifying the target of the symlink.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26.5matica2008090801 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages gnupg depends on:
ii  gpgv                   1.4.9-3           GNU privacy guard - signature veri
ii  libbz2-1.0             1.0.5-1           high-quality block-sorting file co
ii  libc6                  2.7-13            GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libreadline5           5.2-3             GNU readline and history libraries
ii  libusb-0.1-4           2:0.1.12-12       userspace USB programming library
ii  zlib1g                 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-12 compression library - runtime

Versions of packages gnupg recommends:
ii  libldap-2.4-2                 2.4.10-3   OpenLDAP libraries

Versions of packages gnupg suggests:
pn  gnupg-doc                     <none>     (no description available)
ii  graphicsmagick-imagemagick-co 1.1.11-3.1 image processing tools providing I
pn  libpcsclite1                  <none>     (no description available)
ii  xloadimage                    4.1-16     Graphics file viewer under X11

-- no debconf information