Bug#787860: closed by Simon McVittie <smcv at debian.org> (Re: Bug#787860: build seahorse compatible with gpg2)

[Simon McVittie]

On Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 15:54:07 +0100, Mark Brown wrote:
> This bug appears to have drifted well away from the initial report
> (which was about GNOME forcing itself as the SSH agent even if one is
> already set)

Are you confusing the clone #787860 "build seahorse compatible with gpg2"
with your original report #760102 "gnome-keyring: Breaks gpg-agent with
no UI to disable", later retitled to "gnome-keyring: please build with
--disable-gpg-agent"?

You originally reported #760102, which was about gnome-keyring acting as
a GPG agent (it no longer does this, it talks to the normal gpg-agent
instead).

At some point in trying to solve #760102, various other bugs got cloned
from it for building various components as gpg2-compatible instead of
gpg1-compatible so that they would be more gpg-agent-friendly, including
seahorse (#787860). It's #787860 that I recently closed, because I was
going through old seahorse bugs checking whether they had been fixed
upstream.

As a side issue in the original report of #760102, you also mentioned
gnome-keyring also acting as a *SSH* agent, which is what you're now
talking about. It does still do *that* by default (in GNOME, Unity or
MATE desktops), but it can be disabled (I disable it myself, to use the
gpg-agent as my SSH agent for smart card/token support).

FYI, here is how to disable gnome-keyring's SSH agent implementation on a
per-user basis:

* copy /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-keyring-ssh.desktop to ~/.config/autostart/
* add Hidden=true to the [Desktop Entry] group

or system-wide:

* edit /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-keyring-ssh.desktop
* add Hidden=true to the [Desktop Entry] group

I don't think reopening #787860 is useful: that bug report asks for seahorse
to be compiled to be gpg2-compatible, and now it is.

The original topic of #760102 has also mostly been resolved - gnome-keyring
no longer has code to act as a gpg-agent substitute, and instead talks to
the gpg-agent - so the bug was closed.

If you are not happy with gnome-keyring providing a *SSH* agent by default
(in GNOME, MATE and Unity desktops), that would be appropriate to open
as a new bug report against gnome-keyring (although that bug might be
wontfix); but please don't report it as a bug in seahorse. I think a new
bug would be more appropriate than reopening #760102, because the bug
identified in #760102's title was resolved some time ago.

Thanks,
    smcv