Git GPG Signing Setup on OSX


Intro

Setting up Git commit and tag signing with GnuPG on Mac OSX is not as straight forward as one would like it to be. Here are the steps I used to get it set up. Before hand I was getting the following error:

git commit -S -m "test signing"
error: gpg failed to sign the data
fatal: failed to write commit object

Steps

Getting GnuPG setup and configured properly

brew upgrade gnupg
brew link --overwrite gnupg
brew install pinentry-mac
echo "pinentry-program /usr/local/bin/pinentry-mac" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
killall gpg-agent

Once that is set up configure git

# create a key if you already have not done so
gpg --gen-key
# configure git
git config --global gpg.program gpg 
git config --global user.signingkey <key_id>
git config --global commit.gpgsign true  # if you want to sign every commit

Add signing flag when committing or tagging

git commit -S -m 'Signed commit'
git tag -s v1.5 -m 'my signed 1.5 tag'

Viewing signatures

git show v1.5
git log --show-signature -1

Verifying signatures

# check tag signature
git tag -v <tag-name>
# verify signature before merging
git merge --verify-signatures signed-branch

I hope this is helpful for people looking to start signing their Git commits on OSX.