How do I get thunderbird to use my gpg keyring?

Question

Since the latest "improve"ments to Thunderbird, I now have two different gpg keyrings instead of just one. How can I get Thunderbird to use the gpg keyring in ~/.gnupg, instead of its own internal one?

Answer 1

You can Thunderbird configure to use GnuPGP's gpg-agent, and therfore make Thunderbird use the keys of GnuPGP.

Set

mail.openpgp.allow_external_gnupg

to true in Thunderbird's configuration editor. The editor is available via:

Thunderbird → Settings → General → Config Editor

See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:OpenPGP:Smartcards#Allow_the_use_of_external_GnuPG for more information. Note that this wiki page is about smartcards, but the linked section is generic about using gpg-agent with thunderbird.

Answer 2

In order to have Thunderbird use my GnuPG public key ring, I had to enable two options in the config editor (Settings -> General -> Config editor):

mail.openpgp.allow_external_gnupg

mail.openpgp.fetch_pubkeys_from_gnupg

Now Thunderbird will offer to import public keys from my gpg keyring when needed.

Answer 3

The answer is: you can't. There is no way to have Mozilla Thunderbird utilize your existing gpg keyring for public keys.

Per this thread:

Public keys have to be imported into Thunderbird OpenPGP. There is no way around that. This is a design choice.

This is pretty mind-blowing. Can we go back to enigmail? Now we all have to maintain two distinct databases with the same content storing my contact's trusted keys and their level of trust :(

If we meet someone in-person and are able to verify their fingerprint and identity, we have to update it in more than one place. If we forget, then it's a nightmare trying to keep it all in-sync.