[MacPorts] #46601: caff cannot find public keys due to stderr redirection

[MacPorts]

#46601: caff cannot find public keys due to stderr redirection
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  Reporter:  macports@…     |      Owner:  cal@…
      Type:  defect         |     Status:  assigned
  Priority:  Normal         |  Milestone:
 Component:  ports          |    Version:  2.3.3
Resolution:                 |   Keywords:
      Port:  signing-party  |
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Comment (by macports@…):

 I have not told the caff maintainers (so far), but that may be the most
 useful next step.

 Having spent a bunch more time fighting with caff (to get email sending
 working), it seems to be built on some fairly fragile foundations and have
 quite a few (mostly undocumented) assumptions about the environment.  It
 also appears to try to hide the underlying errors from the user to present
 a "nicer" experience (eg, not expose gpg reports of missing keys), but
 that results in making debugging much more difficult because things "just
 fail" sometimes with obscure high level symptoms and all clues for why the
 failed are hidden.

 At present I think I'd suggest:

 1.  ''not'' applying my original patch, as it's at best a partial solution
 with an unfortunate side effect (but hopefully at least this ticket will
 be search bait for anyone else trying to debug the same problem)

 2.  considering/writing a patch which checks for `GPG_AGENT_INFO` being
 set, and if it is warns if `GPG_TTY` is not set (of the "gpg-agent is in
 use but GPG_TTY is not set, some operations may unexpectedly fail"
 variety)

 3.  talking with caff maintainers about applying it upstream, rather than
 just in MacPorts, as with the benefit of many hours more debugging I no
 longer think it is OS X specific (but rather "using gpg-agent" specific).
 And possibly suggesting adding some comments for why stderr is being
 hidden at certain points.

 Ewen

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/46601#comment:3>
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