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windowsgitgnupg

"No secret key" error when signing git commit on Windows

I'm getting this error when trying to sign a commit:

git commit -S -m "test"
gpg: skipped "EF617ACA9EC3XXXX": No secret key
gpg: signing failed: No secret key
error: gpg failed to sign the data
fatal: failed to write commit object

This is the output of gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG

The key is present there

sec   rsa4096/EF617ACA9EC3XXXX 2020-05-17 [SC] [expires: 2022-05-17]
      AD68154000A712DCD161D826EF617ACA9EC3XXXX
uid                 [ultimate] name <[email protected]>

And this is git config with the same key

user.signingkey=EF617ACA9EC3XXXX
[email protected]

Any idea what's wrong?

Solution

  • Check first the git config gpg.program to see if this is gpg or gpg2 (as in here).

    And type where gpg nd where gpg2 to check which path is considered for the GPG program.

    I suggested to set gpg.program to gpg2, and copy your gpg.exe (assuming its version is a 2.x) to gpg2.exe

    That should force Git/GPG to act as gpg2.