Re: bad epg.el+GPG2 behavior: unavoidable passphrase pinentry prompt

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 21:48:19 +0900 Daiki Ueno <address@hidden> wrote: 

DU> Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden> writes:
>> On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 16:23:27 +0900 Daiki Ueno <address@hidden> wrote: 
>> 
DU> Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden> writes:
>>>> It seems that GnuPG has to be explicitly compiled with
>>>> --allow-loopback-pinentry which IMO is a really painful requirement to
>>>> pass onto Emacs users.  I am surprised by this, but perhaps I've
>>>> misunderstood something?
>> 
DU> Why don't you ask Werner directly about the ideas behind this, instead
DU> of complaining here and seeking for a workaround?
>> 
>> Because the bug or misbehavior is specifically in epg.el and I don't
>> know the best way to fix it.

DU> Well, I didn't mean to attack you.

OK, I didn't take it that way :)

DU> I guess the configure option is disabled by default because it
DU> apparently has a security risk and there are not so many users of that
DU> feature.  If you could provide a use case, that might help convince him
DU> to make --allow-loopback-pinentry enabled by default (and release 2.2
DU> and/or backport it to 2.0).

See my earlier e-mails.  But my bigger concern is that for many users, a
new GnuPG release is years in the future, so even if you justify this
change, it won't help anyone quickly.  IMHO epg.el should work around
this "feature" now with the --batch --passphrase-fd options that I
mentioned, especially if they can work on all GnuPG versions (I haven't
tested that).

My question now, since we understand the problem well, is if you agree
with this plan, and if so, do you need patches from me or other
contributors, or will you address it yourself?  There's no urgency
implied here; I am simply trying to fix this for our users by the next
Emacs release.

Ted