Prevent GPG key sharing in VSCode Remote Container

Question

The following paragraph in the official docs describes how to enable GPG key sharing (from localhost to Remote Container) in VSCode ( https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/containers#_sharing-gpg-keys ).

The instructions (for Linux) simply state that to share GPG keys, install gnupg2 locally and in the container. But what if I have gnupg2 installed but I don't want to have the keys shared? From what I can tell, VSCode execs post-startup commands within the container where the key sharing gets done, eg:

Copy /home/karlschriek/.gnupg/pubring.kbx to /home/vscode/.gnupg/pubring.kbx
Copy /home/karlschriek/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg to /home/vscode/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg
...

I have not been able to find a setting that will prevent this. It is also, presumably, using the same gpg-agent as the localhost. I would like to prevent this.

Answer 1

Since this behavior does not seem configurable, I would

• move those files in a custom folder (outside ~/.gnupg, and reference it with the GNUPGHOME environment variable
• write a remote VSCode starter script which would launch VSCode after a local export GNUPGHOME=""

That way, VSCode would search for gnupg files to share in the default ~/.gnupg folder, which is not used in your case.

It is a simple workaround, not an exact solution, but one simple enough to test.