[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#870522: Bug#870522: gnupg1: Consider setting use-agent by default

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

Hi Jeremy--

On Wed 2017-08-02 15:29:06 -0400, Jeremy Bicha wrote:
> I believe Ubuntu's gnupg1 packaging has only one change from Debian:
> uncomment 'use-agent' in g10/options.skel. I believe using the agent
> is the default in gnupg2 anyway. Please consider applying the change.

options.skel is a bad habit in general, and the default on the
actively-maintained upstream branch (2.1) is to not ship options.skel at
all and to just have sensible defaults that work for people.

    https://dev.gnupg.org/T3086

So while the proposed patch below is probably not wrong, a better patch
would change the default itself.

And even better would be to continue deprecating gnupg1 and make sure
it's not in use anywhere so that people don't get confused by an
options.skel that they don't need.

What do you think about this patch instead of your proposed patch?

diff --git a/g10/gpg.c b/g10/gpg.c
index 416d44e98..639503f9c 100644
--- a/g10/gpg.c
+++ b/g10/gpg.c
@@ -1917,6 +1917,7 @@ main (int argc, char **argv )
     set_homedir ( default_homedir () );
     opt.passwd_repeat=1;
     opt.emit_version = 0;
+    opt.use_agent = 1;
 
 #ifdef ENABLE_CARD_SUPPORT
 #if defined(_WIN32) || defined(__CYGWIN__)


and now if people want to avoid that setting, they need to add
no-use-agent to their gpg.conf

The trouble, of course, is that now the gnupg1 package now effectively
Depends: gpg-agent, which brings with it a bunch of other dependencies,
which has historically caused a lot of grumbling.  Is it worthwhile to
pay that price?

I don't want to spend a ton of time on gnupg1, so i'm not going to spin
this into a drawn out discussion, but i'm just laying out some of the
potential issues in making this decision.

Regards,

        --dkg
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