Subject: Re: bug#22711: 25.0.91; prompt for gpg password is displayed in a dialog box rather than in the minibuffer

From: [email-masked] (N. Jackson)
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2016 17:20:43 -0400

At 04:00 +0900 on Thursday 2016-02-18, Daiki Ueno wrote:

> If you do this for the first time on the same session, try restarting
> gpg-agent with:
>
>   gpgconf --reload gpg-agent
>

Thanks Daiki, now it works! (Aside from the uninformative prompt -- see
below.)

So it seems that all that is required to have the gpg password prompt
appear in the minibuffer instead of in a graphical dialog box, is for
the user to add

    allow-emacs-pinentry

to a line in ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf (and to restart gpg-agent, if it is
already running, with

    gpgconf --reload gpg-agent

so that it reads the new setting). Nothing else is required; everything
in Emacs works out of the box.

Perhaps this information could be included in the NEWS entry for
pinentry.el? (And an entry in the manual might be nice too, although I'm
not sure where it would live.)

The password prompt, however, fails to identify the file for which the
password is being requested. In Emacs 24 and 25.0.90, the prompt was,
for example,

    Passphrase for symmetric encryption for /home/nlj/.authinfo.gpg:

Now there is a small buffer displaying

    Enter passphrase

followed by a few blank lines, and, then in the minibuffer, the prompt

    Passphrase:

Could the prompt in the minibuffer (or the text in the little buffer)
not show the name of the file? In fact, what purpose does the little
buffer serve? It seems to clutter up the interface and not add anything
useful. Or am I missing something there?

For completeness, although I do not expect to use it myself, I think
that the prompt in the graphical dialog box would also be improved by
stating the file name, and in this case it would also be useful if it
identified Emacs as being the source of the prompt.

Thanks.

N.