Using age with org-journal

#emacs #age #writing

The problem

Because gpg 2.4.1 borked Emacs's EasyPG. It just hangs on saving.

Why not just use gpg?

There are some ways around it, and I was using the fset hack until I read this post about the person who corrupted their encrypted files. I also had to run the elisp on every new Emacs instance.

And then lib-gcrypt is marked as broken in NixOS if you use the gnupg22 package(Version: 2.2.41), and a blowing past that stop sign sounded like a bad idea.

So I started thinking outside the box.

Why age?

I started using it with agenix, just because Henrik started using it in his dotfiles. The k8s@home template also eventually switched from gpg to age so I was already pretty comfortable with using age.

TL;DR Age: the modern alternative to GPG — nixFAQ:

Age is presented as a modern alternative to GPG that solves many of its limitations while maintaining security.
Age stands for "Actually Good Encryption" and has implementations in Go and Rust for improved security compared to GPG's C implementation.
Age uses smaller keys that are easier to store physically and has a simpler interface with no configuration options.
Files can be encrypted for multiple recipients simultaneously using Age.
Age supports encrypting for SSH public keys in addition to its own keys.
Age allows encrypting files for GitHub users by using their SSH keys from their profile.
Age offers a better user experience than GPG while maintaining an equally high level of security.

Why still org-journal?

I've considered using org-roam-dailies instead of org-journal. However, after some reflection, I'm not entirely sure why. Org Roam supports Age encryption, and org-journal has several PR fixes for various issues that have been neglected (this is not a judgment of the maintainer, but problems like journal files being decrypted whenever the calendar is invoked are troublesome). I think I was just seeking a quick solution to resume journaling.

Setup

Now that you've listened to me ramble on for a bit, here's the actual setup. This is using Doom Emacs.

packages.el

(package! age)

config.el

(use-package! age
  :init
  (setq! age-program "rage")
  :config
  (setq! age-default-identity "~/.ssh/id_ed25519"
         age-default-recipient "~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub")
  (age-file-enable))

Went with rage, because Rust. Also there's pinentry support through rage.