pinentry ./. pinentry-mac???

[agowa]

Output of brew config

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 4.4.31-35-gf6d9276
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: f6d9276f8b2d03de15a858815f2f245dcb00ece6
Last commit: 11 hours ago
Branch: master
Core tap JSON: 18 Apr 13:04 UTC
Core cask tap JSON: 18 Apr 13:04 UTC
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_DISPLAY: :0
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 12
HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE: set
HOMEBREW_SORBET_RUNTIME: set
Homebrew Ruby: 3.3.8 => /opt/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/3.3.8/bin/ruby
CPU: dodeca-core 64-bit arm_lobos
Clang: 17.0.0 build 1700
Git: 2.39.5 => /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/git
Curl: 8.7.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 15.4-arm64
CLT: 16.3.0.0.1.1742442376
Xcode: 16.3
Rosetta 2: false

Output of brew doctor

Your system is ready to brew.

Description of issue

What is the difference between the pinentry and pinentry-mac packages? Especially considering that also the gnupg package on mac appears to be pulling in the former and NOT the later one.

When would I want one over the other? (I've only worked with it on linux before so which one would I want?)

[Paulchen5]

Hi, thats a good question. I have searched a bit on that topic and had a look over the separate packages. By using the brew info <package> command I find that you are right that the gnupg packages uses default pinentry as dependency. When you see the brew info command for pinentry and pinentry-mac you can see that the pinentry-mac package is a bit bigger and has more files.

Also their is this Caveat:

You can now set this as your pinentry program like

~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
    pinentry-program /opt/homebrew/bin/pinentry-mac

When you have a look on the formula you can see that they bove use a different mirror. pinentry-mac uses GitHub while pinentry is relying on a gnupg own mirror.

Important

So pinentry-mac provides the same functionality like pinentry and extends these by using the buildin macOS KeyChain access. So it opens these propmt dialogues where you have to enter your password etc.. It just adds mac specific GUI functionality.

Personally I am using pinentry-mac and adjusted the configuration in ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf.

Tip

I had to set a value for the GPG_TTY environment variable. So I added the following line at the end of my ~/.zshrc file:

export GPG_TTY=/dev/ttys021