# Codeholics

Git GPG Signing Setup on OSX

2021-02-22 07:39

Intro

Setting up Git commit and tag signing with GnuPG on Mac OSX is not as straight forward as one would like it to be. Here are the steps I used to get it set up. Before hand I was getting the following error:

git commit -S -m "test signing"
error: gpg failed to sign the data
fatal: failed to write commit object

Steps

Getting GnuPG setup and configured properly

brew upgrade gnupg
brew link --overwrite gnupg
brew install pinentry-mac
echo "pinentry-program /usr/local/bin/pinentry-mac" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
killall gpg-agent

Once that is set up configure git

# create a key if you already have not done so
gpg --gen-key
# configure git
git config --global gpg.program gpg 
git config --global user.signingkey <key_id>
git config --global commit.gpgsign true  # if you want to sign every commit

Add signing flag when committing or tagging

git commit -S -m 'Signed commit'
git tag -s v1.5 -m 'my signed 1.5 tag'

Viewing signatures

git show v1.5
git log --show-signature -1

Verifying signatures

# check tag signature
git tag -v <tag-name>
# verify signature before merging
git merge --verify-signatures signed-branch

I hope this is helpful for people looking to start signing their Git commits on OSX.