Bug 923961 – app-crypt/gpgfrontend: Manage gpg keys similar to kgpg, but without KDE dependencies built with C++, cmake (New Package)

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: CONFIRMED ---

[Description Matteo Modesti 2024-02-07 00:18:58 UTC]

Hello,
I'm a LxQt user and I'd very much like to see GpgFrontend [1] [2] in Portage: it's a Qt6 GnuPG frontend that is DE-agnostic. It's listed as one of the possible frontends on the GnuPG [3] and OpenPGP [4] websites.
Qt6 is already stable and being used in Portage now, so that's not even a problem.

KGPG is not a good choice because it pulls in a lot of KDE dependencies, including Akonadi... which to me is unthinkable for just using the text editor to decrypt/edit/encrypt files.

Please add it in Portage.
I can help with testing and maybe other things if somebody guides me. I don't have the time to read the documentation and create an ebuild for it, otherwise I'd have already done it and submitted it, but I'll help however I can.

Thanks!

[1] https://gpgfrontend.bktus.com/
[2] https://github.com/saturneric/GpgFrontend
[3] https://www.gnupg.org/software/frontends.html
[4] https://www.openpgp.org/software/misc/gpgfrontend/

[Comment 1 Sam James 2024-02-07 00:36:23 UTC]

There's also kde-apps/kleopatra, but yeah, a reasonable request of course.

[Comment 2 Matteo Modesti 2024-04-06 00:56:17 UTC]

(In reply to Sam James from comment #1)
> There's also kde-apps/kleopatra, but yeah, a reasonable request of course.

Thanks, I didn't know about it. It still has some KDE dependencies, but maybe I'll try it to temporarily replace KGPG until GpgFrontend is in Portage.

[Comment 3 Matteo Modesti 2024-04-11 12:15:47 UTC]

Tried Kleopatra last week but it's not a replacement for KGPG, at least not for the text editor: the GUI is very bad IMO and it can only open one file at a time, which is definitely not my use case.

Since then I've been trying GpgFrontend using the AppImage:
* it can open multiple text files and uses tabs instead of windows, which IMO is better than KGPG;
* it's much lighter than KGPG (loads much faster and with 6 files opened uses ~54 MB, while KGPG uses ~121 MB with those same 6 files and ~107 MB with no files);
* the GUI is clean and nice.

So, GpgFrontend is definitely a replacement for KGPG, at least for my use case and for anybody who doesn't want the KDE framework installed.

I tried to build it manually but it fails and right now I don't have time to understand why (3 subdirectories of third_party/ don't contain CMakeLists.txt), let alone learn how to make an ebuild after fixing it (but some help and/or links would be much appreciated anyway).