GPG keys are no longer shared with development containers on Windows by default

16 February 2024

If you are into the habit of signing your Git commits, the configuration on Windows has always been pretty straightforward: install Gpg4win, set up your keys in the graphical interface and you’re pretty much done. And sharing those keys inside a development container with Visual Studio Code was even easier: nothing to do!

Well, that was the case until version 4.2 of Gpg4win. I have been banging my head for days now on why this wouldn’t work on a new machine of mine… As it turns out, the way keys are stored by Gpg4win by default has changed: it now uses keyboxd and Visual Studio Code doesn’t know how to handle that. Yet?

The old behaviour can simply be restored by running:

gpg-disable-keyboxd.bat

Done. You may have to recreate your containers for the keys to be picked up in your container.