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Signed Git commits in VS Code

Andreas on September 27, 2019

The time had come to fix something that had been bugging me for a long time: Still making unsigned Git commits from VS Code. TL;DR: Add "git.enabl...

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Paweł Kowalski • Oct 8 '19 • Edited

Thank you so much for this post. Very good stuff

I didnt manage to do it myself, but thats probably just me and one day it will work ;)

Edit: Fixed.
I had to use GPG Keychain for mac os to make it work. ;)

Andreas • Oct 11 '19

You're welcome, glad I could help! And thanks for the GPG keychain hint!

Kaartic Sivaraam • Jan 15 '20

Nice post. It would be nice to have TL;DR at the top of the post that just covered the following content:

Finally you have to tell VS Code to append the -s flag to the git commit command, to use signed committing now. Open the settings, search for “gpg” and check the box “Enables commit signing with GPG”.

Alternatively you can add this line to your settings.json :
"git.enableCommitSigning": true
And that’s it! Now you can commit your changes in VS Codes Git integration and sign your work.

Andreas • Jun 2 '21

Great suggestions - done. Many thanks (and sorry for the late reply - didn't see any notification about your comment).

Anthony Bouvier • Sep 27 '19

Make sure to look up the discussion around whether you should auto-sign or not.

Linus Torvalds for instance is against it.

I personally do auto-sign my own work.

Just suggesting that you look into the discussion and make your decision.

Andreas • Sep 27 '19

Thank you Anthony for your suggestion!

I found this thread where Linus describes his opinion about auto-sign commits. But I'm not really sure I understood his point correctly... For me it sounds more that he argues for a different use case: the verification of the integrity of a release (git tags) or entire project. For me it's more about verifying the authorship of single commits.

Molly Crendraven • Jul 31 '21

Updated link web.archive.org/web/20210412010515...

Matías González • Oct 30 '21

Good article! Though I don't know if I'm understanding the subject incorrectly but I think the git commit flag needed to sign (in the sense of using you gpg keys to sign the commit) is -S and not -s. I'm assuming that the "git.enableCommitSigning": true option is adding -S correctly. My git man pages reads:

-s, --signoff
           Add Signed-off-by line by the committer at the end of the commit log message. The meaning of a signoff
           depends on the project, but it typically certifies that committer has the rights to submit this work under
           the same license and agrees to a Developer Certificate of Origin (see http://developercertificate.org/ for
           more information).

-S[<keyid>], --gpg-sign[=<keyid>]
           GPG-sign commits. The keyid argument is optional and defaults to the committer identity; if specified, it
           must be stuck to the option without a space.

Nicola Erario • Sep 28 '19

Now I have my green badge on my commits, thank you! Good write( only the “import” section wasn’t clear to me ).

Andreas • Sep 28 '19 • Edited

Nice 👏🏻!
And thank you for your feedback! Any suggestions how to improve the "import" part? I'll try to update it soon!

Nicola Erario • Sep 28 '19

In reality, I haven’t to import nothing: after the key are created, go straight to “set up git” section; to setup GitHub, then, with the command gpg —armor —export you can copy/paste the public key to GitHub settings. Furthermore I discovered that git on windows came bundled with own gpg executable so, using your guide with git bash, the “Error: secret key not available” section is useless (git can commit without to declare the path because it uses its own). Last trick: you can leave the pass phrase blank so you don’t need to write it to commit. Ps: sorry for the formatting, I’m on mobile

Andreas • Sep 29 '19 • Edited

Thank you Nicola, I've updated the post accordingly! The "import" part now covers the key creation case and gpg --armor --export command.

Yes, if you don't have any issues with this error message, you don't have to specify the path. It was just meant for those, who are facing the same problem as I did.

I wouldn't recommend using a private key without a passphrase for security reasons. But yes, you're right: you don't have to use a passphrase.

Connor Ruggles • Nov 22 '19 • Edited

The one problem I've come upon is on Mac, if you haven't put your passphrase in for a while, VSCode doesn't prompt you for your password, you have to commit from the terminal. This is solved by using GPG Suite, as it permanently caches your credentials, but without using this you're unable to commit every ~2 hours from the interface and have to use the terminal.

Otherwise, great post.

Andreas • Aug 5 '21

Thank you for this addition 👏🏻

SuperMario • Aug 16 '20

For me, I had to add a Carriage Return after -"----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----" and before "-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----" to get it to work, but otherwise killer write up Fam! Thank you for this! ❤💯

P. Mergey • Aug 5 '21 • Edited

This kind of article is exactly what I expect to find on this platform: something which is supplementing documentation by adding some specific case studies (i.e. your last part about unavailability of secret key).

That being said, to come back to the subject, once the key has been created and the VSC editor settings have been properly configured, the recurring appearance of the Pinentry dialog window in order to type passphrase each time you are ready to commit something is particularly annoying (and it doesn't seem easy to define an convenient storage of this password currently).

Andreas • Aug 5 '21

Thank you for your comment (I didn't get notified about it, seems like this is a general issue on dev.to for new comments on old articles)! I'm totally with you here - though you get used to it at some point, it's nevertheless additional effort.

I see if I can find a convenient way to save this password on a trusted device. I will update the article accordingly if I found something.

Fernando B 🚀 • Sep 27 '19

That's pretty cool, I need to get mine setup. Awesome read!

Andreas • Sep 27 '19

Thank you 😊! I'm glad this post is useful for you!

Mitch Chimwemwe Chanza • Sep 1 '23 • Edited

Thanks for this guide. i guess i don't have to make the same post i will share it. i have been using this feature on my account but a few week ago i came across a problem where every time i want to push changes to my repo it gives me this error:

  Git: fatal: the receiving end does not support --signed push

i have to use the terminal and include

--signed=false

for any push to work and it keeps my green badge status
any help on this guys.
Thanks for you help.

Sergio • Sep 27 '19

Pretty cool thanks a lot

Andreas • Sep 27 '19

You're welcome 😊! Happy to see that it's useful!

Rémi FLAMENT • Nov 25

You can define the key to use in your git config

git config --global user.signingkey AF5AD0.....

Ryan Norooz • Mar 12 '21

just Created an account to come and thank you for the awesome article👍
keep up the good stuff❤

Andreas • Jun 2 '21

You're very welcome 🤗 Will do!

Adarsh Madrecha • Oct 11 '20 • Edited

Thanks for the guide. I have also written my 1st technical guide on the same topic with detailed screenshots for Windows and Gitlab - link.medium.com/LqSLButvuab