wsl2-ssh-pageant VS direnv

Hey there! So, I've been using WSL2 with a yubikey for gpg, which is pretty sweet. Basically, this setup uses a Unix socket to Windows gpg-agent and pageant (if you're curious, you can find all the details in this GitHub repo: https://github.com/BlackReloaded/wsl2-ssh-pageant). It's been working great for about a month or so, until I recently installed the Windows Store version for WSLg support on Windows 10. But now, my WSL2 isn't talking to the Win gpg-agent anymore. I've searched GitHub for answers, but no luck yet. Figured I'd post here and see if there are others in the same boat or who might have some tips on this pesky socket issue. Thanks!

You should use the latest wsl2-ssh-peagent, which has a new --gpgConfigBasepath option to allow you to specify the .gnupg directory in Windows.

sshCommand = C:/utils/OpenSSH-Win64/ssh.exe

For GPG, the only things I've done is to use gpg-agent and set up a passthrough for gpg-agent to WSL2 for both OpenSSH and GPG via https://github.com/BlackReloaded/wsl2-ssh-pageant/ since I do development both natively on Windows and via WSL2.

Yeah, I've been using a Yubikey for a bit over a year and I'm already a huge fan of the way it works with SSH/Git. It's a bit more of a pain to set up with WSL2 since you need something like https://github.com/BlackReloaded/wsl2-ssh-pageant but it's absolutely worth the setup time.

I use PuTTY's pageant and https://github.com/BlackReloaded/wsl2-ssh-pageant to share keys between environments but you still need to enter your passphrase at power-on. Window's ssh-agent looks like a better solution. No need to re-enter the passphrase and no need to keep the private key around.

I think direnv already does a good job in this space, and it's already available in your package manager.

https://direnv.net/

I switched from asdf to mise after a comment on lobste.rs[1] suggested I do so a few months ago, and I have been very happy with it.

It sands off some of asdf's sharp UI edges and provides a somewhat larger but still reasonable feature set; I've also replaced most of my direnv[2] usage with it.

The mise -> asdf comparison page is useful[3]

1: https://lobste.rs/s/66uxbj/how_love_homebrew#c_mvmsjp

2: https://direnv.net/

3: https://mise.jdx.dev/dev-tools/comparison-to-asdf.html

I also made the export diff configurable, motivated by this post: https://github.com/direnv/direnv/pull/1233

Nice.

For years I've been using [direnv](https://direnv.net/) for this, setting environment variables which git picks up. This looks like a more feature complete equivalent, although to be honest I only really need switching of committer email and the SSH key used.

Direnv, for the uninitiated, loads and unloads environment variables when directories are entered and exited. Under every project folder there is a `$PROJ_DIR/.envrc` which contains:

buffer-env: A pure-Elisp version of the direnv utility. Useful to make Emacs aware of Python virtualenvs (which, judging by the questions posted here, is unfortunately still a complication for a lot of people). Similar to (and inspired by) envrc, but doesn't require the direnv program.

You can look at direnv to see this in action as they wrote shell hooks that get loaded into the shell profile and are executed on every prompt. https://direnv.net/

Yes, most Nix users employ https://direnv.net or the equivalent for your IDE of choice. Emacs for instance has https://github.com/purcell/envrc which set per-buffer variables.