bug#24553: 25.1; epa ignores epg-gpg-program in very confusing way

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 29 Sep 2016 17:53:09 +0200 Daiki Ueno <ueno@gnu.org> wrote: 

DU> Nick Helm <nick@tenpoint.co.nz> writes:
>>> I need to edit some files that decrypt properly with gpg 1.4 but not gpg
>>> 2.1.  I have both installed on my system, with 1.4 as /usr/bin/gpg1 and
>>> 2.1 as /usr/bin/gpg2.  The bug is that emacs ignores the epg-gpg-program
>>> variable *except* in error messages, which is very confusing.  
>> 
>>> Ideally emacs should obey epg-gpg-program ...
>> 
>> I have a similar problem with epg-gpg-program. See bug#24229
>> (https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=24229) for some
>> discussion that might be relevant.

DU> And I want to close this as a duplicate of that bug.  Is there still
DU> anything we can technically do for this?  Isn't it enough to suggest:

DU>   M-: (custom-set-variables '(epg-gpg-program "gpg1" t))

DU> instead of setq?

Respectfully, the usability bug here is different: EPA/EPG only uses the
customized value, while the log message only uses the actual value in
the variable. So the log messages should be adjusted, if you want to
keep using the customized value only in EPA/EPG. And perhaps they should
catch and mention the case where the customized value is not the same as
the variable value, again for usability's sake.

HTH
Ted