How to start gpg-agent v2.4.8 on Windows (gpg4win 4.4.1) with OpenSSH emulation?

[Werner Koch]

On Mon,  5 Jan 2026 20:42, Marco Ricci said:

> I have since resolved my underlying problem (spawning gpg-agent with
> OpenSSH emulation support) directly; it turned out to be user error.

Good.

> I have multiple copies of GnuPG (via MSYS, via Git, via gpg4win)

That is actually a problem which we see more and more.  For gpg4win 5 we
have changed things so that it will be easier to install several
versions and have Kleopatra and gpgol use the intended one.

> correct, documented way to pass command-line arguments to the invocation
> of `gpg-agent`, because I wanted to debug whether I was launching

Only if you start gpg-agent by hand and not let other compinet start it
you can do:

  gpg-agent --verbose --enable-something --daemon

But gpg-agent may not already run as it would not start in this case.
It is better to let the components (or "gpgconf --launch gpg-agent")
start gpg-agent and put options into the config file.  Note that there
may also be global config file.  If you use 

  gpg-agent --debug 0

you can see the used config files:

  C:\Users\dd9jn>gpg-agent --debug 0
  gpg-agent[2928]: reading options from '[cmdline]'
  gpg-agent[2928]: reading options from 'C:/Users/dd9jn/AppData/Roaming/gnupg/common.conf'
  gpg-agent[2928]: gpg-agent running and available

in this case we have only a local common.conf.



Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

-- 
The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that
refuse military service.             - A. Einstein
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