I’m not going to cryptographically sign my git commits, and you shouldn’t either.

I’m curious to hear what the Lemmy programming community thinks of this!

  • The author argues against signing Git commits, stating that it adds unnecessary complexity to systems.
  • The author believes that signing commits perpetuates an engineering culture of blindly adopting complex tools.
  • The consequences of signing Git commits are likely to be subtle and not as dramatic as some may believe.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/vjDeK

  • MajorHavoc
    53·
    11 months ago

    Great read.

    I agree about the culture problem. People want to slap extra encryption into things, like a spoiler on a hatchback.

    The core issue is that the problem being addressed by signed commits is already solved.

    Did MajorHavoc write this commit?

    If it has my username, on GitHub, you’re confident it’s my commit.

    Alternately, it could be someone with so much access to my SSH keys, or to GitHib’s infrastructure, that they could easily sign commits as me, anyway.

    Signed commits might become more compelling when we start to favor fully open source federated git solutions. At that point, if I’m famously trustworthy, and the repo I submitted a signed commit to is not, then my signature could mean something.

    But even then, there’s the risk that someone interprets my 4 minute typo fix as my having some clue whether the repo is actually safe to use…

    • Matt/DEnglish
      92·
      11 months ago

      Anyone can slap your name and email on a commit and pretend you wrote it

      • MajorHavoc
        13·
        11 months ago

        On GitHub, the account that pushed the commit is already fairly evident.

        Commits pushed from my GitHub account are differentiated from commits that are not.

        I don’t want huge centralized Git infrastructure, but while we have it, signed commits are less compelling.

        And I’m not saying I love the current state of code authorship verification, either.

    • Mikina
      71·
      11 months ago

      If it has my username, on GitHub, you’re confident it’s my commit.

      Apparently, that’s not true: https://dev.to/martiliones/how-i-got-linus-torvalds-in-my-contributors-on-github-3k4g

      However, it’s a pretty old article - maybe it’s already fixed? I’ll have to try that.

      EDIT: It still works, and you can just use the github noreply address, which is [email protected] . The commit gets linked to their profile, and is shown on their profile page, has their username and profile picture. I haven’t figured out any difference between legit and impersonated commit so far, but maybe it’s hidden somwhere in the repo administration.

      So, there you have it. That’s what PGP signing is for.

      • MajorHavoc
        3·
        11 months ago

        Nice.

        That’s enough to make me reconsider signing. Thanks!