git-signify

A tool to sign arbitrary objects in a git repository.

Generating keys

Signing keys can be generated with signify, from the OpenBSD project.

$ signify -G -p newkey.pub -s newkey.sec

If you do not wish to encrypt your keys, pass the -n flag to the command line of signify.

Alternatively, minisign keys may also be used. This project provides a more portable alternative to signify.

$ minisign -G -p newkey.pub -s newkey.sec

git-signify always assumes that minisign keys are encrypted, albeit the CLI tool allows generating non-encrypted keys.

Basic usage

This program keeps track of signatures made by a keypair with a given fingerprint as git references. References can be fetched from and pushed to a remote.

$ git signify pull origin
$ git signify push origin

Verification can be done with git signify verify. For example, to verify a release of git-signify itself:

$ git pull --tags
$ git signify pull
$ git signify verify -k <(curl -sfL https://gandas.us.to/keys/git.pub) v0.7.0
$ git signify verify -k <(curl -sfL https://gandas.us.to/keys/git_minisign.pub) v0.7.0

To sign git revisions, run something akin to:

$ git signify sign -k <secret-key> v0.7.0

In-depth

Brief overview of how this program works

git-signify writes a tree object to some git repository containing the following blobs:

100644 blob aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa	algorithm
100644 blob bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb	signature
100644 blob cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc	version

Another git object object may be present in the tree, if a signature over a blob or another tree is being made. This object is a pointer to the respective git object being signed over. On the other hand, signature contains the base64 encoded signify or minisign signature over the raw (20 byte) id of object. The remaining blobs, version and algorithm, represent the current version of the git-signify tree format and the algorithm (minisign or signify) being used, respectively.

The tree is then committed along with a potential parent, which is the commit hash being signed over, if any. The resulting commit's hash is returned by git signify raw sign.

Signatures end up in refs/signify/signatures/${key_fingerprint}/${sig_hash}, where $key_fingerprint can be computed by git signify fingerprint, and $sig_hash is a hash returned by git signify raw sign.

Why, we have GnuPG

GPG sucks.