[PATCH] gpg-agent: Enable socket activation

[Werner Koch]

On Thu, 20 Nov 2014 14:20, shea at shealevy.com said:

> Hm, I don’t understand this reasoning. Why is it bad to use
> non-portable methods in a completely optional feature? I’m not

For maintenance reasons and to reduce code complexity.

> If all portable software avoided optional use of non-portable
> functionality, I doubt any functionality would gain enough prominence
> to become established.

True if that would solve any real problem.  <rant>systemd is the
Windowization of Unix and such the opposite of portable and modularized
software.  It is sad to see how WindowsNT moved over the last 15 years
towards a system more similar to Unix while Linux as the spearhead of
the Unix standardization is splitting up into the non-interoperable Unix
world we had reached 25 years ago.  Time to reconsider FreeBSD</>

> Not everyone has the luxury of a personal single-user machine, and

You shall not use private keys on a multi-user machine.

> If socket activation isn’t an option, can we at least have a flag to
> not fork and set a new session? At least we still get some of the

--no-detach already exists but it is mostly useless.  Yes we can
probably add an option to run without a fork but I see no use case for
that except for starting gpg-agent from inittab (or whatever you guys do
on your not-anymore-Unix boxes these days).

The main point is: gpg-agent shall be started on demand and not by any
session control daemon.

> benefits of having the daemon manage lifetime easier in that scenario.

BTW, having a session logoff script remove the socket file is an easy
way to shutdown gpg-agent:

  4 - 19:57:49 gpg-agent[563]: can't connect my own socket: IPC connect call failed
  4 - 19:57:49 gpg-agent[563]: this process is useless - shutting down
  4 - 19:57:51 gpg-agent[563]: gpg-agent (GnuPG) 2.1.1-beta19 stopped

and by using rm(1) this is race free.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner

-- 
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