[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#980838: Bug#980838: gpg-agent: generator 90gpg-agent without scdaemon generate annoying log

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

Control: severity 980838 minor

I'm marking this minor because the only cost is a one extra log line on
systems where gpg-agent is installed but scdaemon is not.  I do agree
it's annoying.

On Fri 2021-01-22 23:29:00 +0000, Bastien Roucariès wrote:
> Without scdaemon the 90gpg-agent will output something like 
> LANG=C gpgconf --check-programs
>
> gpgconf: error running '/usr/lib/gnupg/scdaemon': probably not installed
> gpg:OpenPGP:/usr/bin/gpg:1:1:
> gpg-agent:Private Keys:/usr/bin/gpg-agent:1:1:
> scdaemon:Smartcards:/usr/lib/gnupg/scdaemon:0:0:
> gpgsm:S/MIME:/usr/bin/gpgsm:1:1:::enabled debug flags%3a ipc:
> dirmngr:Network:/usr/bin/dirmngr:1:1:
> pinentry:Passphrase Entry:/usr/bin/pinentry:1:1:
>
> The error line will go to log....

I see three approaches to fixing this:

a) make the gpg-agent package explicitly Depend: on scdaemon

b) make the generator's invocaton of gpgconf --check-programs send
   stderr to /dev/null

c) fix gpgconf (from the gpgconf package) to not produce an error
   message to stderr when running --check-programs.  (this is happening
   in the definition of gc_component_check_options in
   tools/gpgconf-comp.c, but the error message it's nested much more
   deeply, in the comon/exechelp-posix.c, and it's not clear to me how
   to turn off just that particular error reporting as opposed to
   other potential errors -- i'd probably need help from upstream to do
   this safely)

Any thoughts as to what would be preferable?

    --dkg
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