[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#645426: gpg --homedir /nonexistent --gen-key goes through the entire key generation process, then errors out

[Josh Triplett]

On Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 06:41:34PM +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:
> Control: tags -1 wontfix
> Control: found -1 2.4.7-1
> 
> On 2011-10-15 Josh Triplett <josh at joshtriplett.org> wrote:
> > Package: gnupg
> > Version: 1.4.11-3
> > Severity: normal
> 
> > For a quick test, I needed to generate a temporary GPG key.  I started
> > with "gpg --homedir /tmp/gpg-temp --gen-key".  This walked me all the
> > way through the key generation process, including lengthy entropy
> > collection, before erroring out because the directory didn't exist (I'd
> > expected gpg to create it):
> [...]
> 
> This was marked wontfix and closed upstream:
> 
> | Werner said:
> | > GnuPG tries to create its _default_ home directory because this is the
> | > common case. Creating a home directory in every case would clutter the
> | > disk with gnupg related data which may even be sensitive.
> | 
> | Closing as wontfix.

Clarifying something here: while I would love to have seen gpg *create*
the directory, the most important part of the bug here is "detect early
that it doesn't exist, and error out before going through the whole
interactive process".