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Comment by Retr0id | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious, what do you actually use it for?

I'd have otherwise guessed that this tool mainly exists just to test lib25519. Personally I'd only ever want a library, or some higher-level tool. A CLI tool that just does raw signing feels like a weird (and footgun-shaped) middle ground.

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This mostly exists to test lib25519 and ostensibly to build systems with shell scripts (though: few people would do that). It is a weird and footgun-shaped middle ground.

It's why no one has succeeded in replacing GPG: you need a lot of systems to work in order to have an actual viable one, the ability to spit out signatures from keys is required but not sufficient.

GPG is pervasive for the same reason git is pervasive: network effects. There are plenty of better alternatives.

Such as? I need an alternative which supports commutative trust relationships of some sort which are revocable.

Keybase or any of the tools inspired by keybase (foks.pub etc)

Isn’t keybase to GPG what github is to git?

You (knowingly?) picked the one counter example, lol. Web of trust is the one application of PGP/GPG for which there isn’t a product ready replacement tool to point towards. GPG is built around web of trust, but this is generally believed to have been a very, very bad idea and the source of innumerable security problems for nearly every application that has tried to make use of it. The GPG replacements I would point to are purpose-built for specific domains and eschew web of trust:

https://soatok.blog/2024/11/15/what-to-use-instead-of-pgp/

That said, you might find what you are looking for in the Rebooting Web of Trust project, and the various decentralized identity (DID) implementations that have come out of it:

https://www.weboftrust.info/

No I picked the case I'm dealing with most commonly: which is establishing trust. X509 certs will also do this.

I have numerous criticisms of the GPG system but it's not a solution to just not implement any solution at all: I.e. I need revocation lists, I need intermediate keys, I need the ability to establish alternate chains of trust or promote a chain to trusted. Some of this is very hard to do with x509 even or not will supported.

Trust meaning who you should do business with? Whose advice you should take?

Rather than “trust” you mean something very specific: whether a key was issued by an entity, or attested to from a set of authorities. The “web of trust” model that PGP/GPG supports is not the ideal means of implementing this.

> I'm curious, what do you actually use it for?

FTA:

> These tools allow lib25519 to be easily used from shell scripts.

I've never used ed25519-cli, but not having to use a library is nice for someone who isn't a programmer.

The Venn diagram of "not a programmer" and "can safely use Ed25519" is two non-overlapping circles.

Simply combine this tool with `openssl enc` and your shell script is as secure as any shell script could be

I don't consider myself a programmer and I can use Ed25519 safely. I do however understand computing fairly well.

I consider myself a programmer and ed25519-understander, but the idea of using it directly within a shell script terrifies me.

"this app needs me to generate a key and point to it in config" is plenty of overlap

If you just want a raw ed25519 private key then `head -c32 /dev/urandom` does the job. But usually you want a DER/PEM wrapper or similar, which the openssl cli tools handle nicely.

Someone writing shell scripts is a programmer, for better or worse.

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