Problem with faked-system-time option

[Amano Corunga]

On Sun, 05 Jun 2011 10:32:13 +0200, Werner Koch wrote:

>On Fri,  3 Jun 2011 21:32, amanoc at dizum.nl said:
>
>> In doc\gpg.man of my gnupg 1.4.11 I found
>>
>> --faked-system-time epoch
>>     This  option is only useful for testing; it sets the system time
>
>You need to use GnuPG-2, Gpg4win installs gpg2 under the name gpg but
>older instalaltions don't.  The installer is availabale at gpg4win.org.

Werner, thanks for that hint.  I installed the naked GPG part of
Gpg4Win but didn't get it working.

To begin with, I wonder whether I have to drag along all those 25 MB
for using GnuPG-2 compared with less than 2 MB with GnuPG-1 (gpg.exe +
iconv.dll).  Is there a chance to slim it down in case I only need to
create / delete keys and encrypt / sign / verify messages?

And are there instructions available on how to perform those tasks
without altering the host system.  I have GPG1 with all its data
stored on a removable device and use it on several computers, no local
installation required.  That's a perfect portable application, which
shouldn't be dismissed without an adequate replacement at hand.

Last but not least, do I have to start the gpg-agent background task
for each command line gpg call if I don't want to risk data corruption
when inadvertently removing that USB device?

Those are a lot of questions, but I'm still highly sceptical towards
that GPG2 monster and would prefer to stay with my more manageable
GPG1, if it only had that faked-system-time option.  Is there room for
hope to get it enhanced that way?

Thanks again

Amano