Setting up Git for Windows and Gpg4win (WIP)

setting-up-msysgit-and-gpg4win.md

Setting up Git for Windows and Gpg4win

This article will help you set up your development environment with git and gpg to sign your commits and manage your gpg keys for different personas.

This article will not guide you step by step to install the programms needed, explain how gpg works nor will it tell you why you should sign your git commits.

Prerequisites

• You are on a Windows (7+) system
• You have installed [msysgit]
• You have installed Gpg4win
• You may have already generated your gpg keys with msysgit's gpg or with Gpg4win

Generating your gpg keys

Open %UserProfile%/AppData/Roaming/gnupg/gpg.conf and add the following lines:

personal-digest-preferences SHA256
cert-digest-algo SHA256

The create your keys either with GPA, Kleopatra or on the command line.

Setting up msysgit's gpg

Download and extract iconv.dll to /path/to/Git/bin

Open /path/to/Git/etc/profile and change the following line:
export GNUPGHOME=~/.gnupg
to
export GNUPGHOME="/c/Users/UserName/AppData/Roaming/gnupg"

Open Git bash and enter the following:
$> gpg --list-key
You should now see your keys

If you have generated your keys first with msysgit's gpg (on Git bash) then copy the files under
%UserProfile%/.gnupg to %UserProfile%/AppData/Roaming/gnupg

Export and import your public and secret keys between the two locations, otherwise.

Git Bash uses GPG 1.4.x and Gpg4win uses 2.0.x

TODO

Managing multiple keys in a git repository

by mflatischler under CC-BY-SA

However, to make gpg commands themselves use Gpg4win in git bash, I found the easiest solution to be simply defining an alias. That is, add the following line:

# ~/.bashrc (add it if it's not there)
alias gpg='/c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/GnuPG/bin/gpg.exe'

@Rabadash8820 Good point! Just one remark, depending on the details it may be somewhat more robust to use:

alias gpg="$(printf "%q" "$(cygpath -amF 42)")"'/GnuPG/bin/gpg.exe'

The -F allows you to use one of the folder IDs for well-known shell folders.

PS: originally gave another method, but that turns out to be troublesome thanks to the quoting and escaping requirements by Bash.