[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#753163: Bug#753163: Bug#753163: Fix before first point release ?

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

over on https://bugs.debian.org/753163 ...

On Tue 2015-04-28 03:14:45 -0400, Werner Koch wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Apr 2015 06:32, raphael.halimi at gmail.com said:
>> Will this bug be fixed before the first point release ?
 [...]
> For the dependency problem there is a way out:  Since GnuPG 2.1.2:
>
>  * agent: Now tries to use a fallback pinentry if the standard
>    pinentry is not installed.
>
> Thus depending on a "pinentry-basic" binary (which may either be -curses
> or -dumb) you have a working setup.  Any desktop may then install -gtk or
> -qt as "pinentry" and you get want you want.

We should already be able to support this approach in debian with
/etc/alternatives, i think.

This should be satisfied with the default /usr/bin/pinentry being
pinentry-curses if no other one is installed, and then if -gtk or -qt
are installed, /etc/alternatives will be updated to point to the newer
one.

Fixing https://bugs.debian.org/765406 in tasksel by making the desktop
tasks recommend the matching graphical pinentry would resolve this
problem.  There's even a patch for it:

 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=12;filename=tasksel.diff;att=1;bug=765406

If we could get that patch into the next point release for tasksel, i'd
be happy to move pinentry-curses to the front of the gpg-agent
Recommends pinentry disjunction for the point release as well.

This is not an increase in the dependencies for the graphical
environments, since they likely already depend on pinentry through the
current dependency chain.  But it will be a reduction in the
dependencies for server users.

If we just update the gpg-agent recommends pinentry disjunction, it's
likely that some desktop jessie users will be stuck behind
pinentry-curses, which would be a bad user experience.

Making a coordinated change with both of these updates seems like the
right way to go.  tasksel folks, are you OK with this?

     --dkg