GnuPG 2.2 on elder Debian & Ubuntu distros

[Phil Pennock]

On 2018-03-01 at 17:06 +0100, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> Your page is quite helpful, my suggestion is to add or link an example how to 
> set the path, e.g. sourcing a bash file like
> 
> ::::::::::::::
> setgnupg
> ::::::::::::::
> base=/opt/gnupg
> 
> export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$base/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
> export MANPATH=$base/share/man:$MANPATH
> export PATH=$base/bin:$PATH
> ::::::::::::::

LD_LIBRARY_PATH is unneeded, because the executables have the RPATH
stamped into them.

% readelf -d $(which gpg) | grep RPATH
 0x000000000000000f (RPATH)              Library rpath: [/opt/gnupg/lib]

You _shouldn't_ need to set MANPATH explicitly on any modern man(1)
system, because they have facilities to translate $PATH to $MANPATH
accordingly.  On a Trusty VM, even without anything explicit for
/opt/gnupg listed in /etc/manpath.config, if I run:

  unset MANPATH
  manpath

then I see the inferred MANPATH which is used by default, and it
contains a correct entry for PATH.

Thus the _only_ step needed is to update $PATH.

My personal stance is that if someone doesn't know how to update PATH,
then that's fine and reasonable, but that someone at such a skill level
has no business installing replacement cryptographic commands from
sources which they are highly unlikely to be able to adequately assess.

-Phil