[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#874304: gpg: --refresh-keys became extremely verbose and complaining

[Francesco Poli (wintermute)]

Package: gpg
Version: 2.1.23-2
Severity: normal

Hello Debian GnuPG Maintainers!

After today's upgrade, I refreshed some keys in my keyring and noticed
that gpg has just become extremely verbose.

For instance:

  $ gpg --refresh-keys 0xCCD2ED94D21739E9
  gpg: refreshing 1 key from hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net
  uid  Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg at aclu.org>
  sig!         0x5A94F3CA0B2713C8 2014-03-23  Ben Armstrong <synrg at sanctuary.nslug
  sig!         0xED1A3933B2CFCDD8 2014-09-02  Philipp Kern
  [... 644 lines snipped !!! ...]
  sub  0x1498ADC6C1923237
  sig!         0xCCD2ED94D21739E9 2016-12-21  [self-signature]
  key 0xCCD2ED94D21739E9:
  1 duplicate signature removed
  780 signatures not checked due to missing keys
  gpg: key 0xCCD2ED94D21739E9: "Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg at fifthhorseman.net>" not changed
  gpg: Total number processed: 1
  gpg:              unchanged: 1


In other words, 656 lines of output (on stderr) for 1 unchanged key!

The output seems to be (more or less) the old output of
"gpg --refresh-keys $KEYID", combined with the output of
"gpg --check-sigs $KEYID".

For reference, the old output was something like:

  $ gpg --refresh-keys 0xCCD2ED94D21739E9
  gpg: refreshing 1 key from hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net
  gpg: key 0xCCD2ED94D21739E9: "Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg at fifthhorseman.net>" not changed
  gpg: Total number processed: 1
  gpg:              unchanged: 1


I cannot find any additional option to restore the previous behavior:

  $ gpg --no-verbose --refresh-keys 0xCCD2ED94D21739E9

produces the same lengthy output.

  $ gpg -q --refresh-keys 0xCCD2ED94D21739E9

suppresses the old (useful) output, while retaining the lengthy
signature check output...


Where am I going wrong?
Could the old behavior be restored?

Please fix this bug and/or forward my report upstream, as appropriate.

Thanks for your time!


-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (800, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.12.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages gpg depends on:
ii  gpgconf        2.1.23-2
ii  libassuan0     2.4.3-3
ii  libbz2-1.0     1.0.6-8.1
ii  libc6          2.24-17
ii  libgcrypt20    1.7.9-1
ii  libgpg-error0  1.27-3
ii  libreadline7   7.0-3
ii  libsqlite3-0   3.19.3-3
ii  zlib1g         1:1.2.8.dfsg-5

Versions of packages gpg recommends:
ii  gnupg  2.1.23-2

gpg suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information