NAME

       jetring - maintenance of gpg keyrings using changesets

OVERVIEW

       jetring  is  a  collection  of  tools  that  allow for gpg keyrings to be maintained using
       changesets. It was developed with the Debian keyring  in  mind,  and  aims  to  solve  the
       problem  that  a  gpg  keyring  is  a  binary  blob  that's  hard  for  multiple people to
       collaboratively edit.

       With jetring, changesets can be submitted, reviewed to see  exactly  what  they  will  do,
       applied,  and  used  to build a keyring. The origin of every change made to the keyring is
       available for auditing, and gpg signatures can be used to further secure things.

OPERATION

       A jetring directory is used as the "source" that a keyring is built from.  To  convert  an
       existing gpg keyring to such a directory, use the jetring-explode(1) command.

       Each  change  to  the gpg keyring is stored in a separate changeset file in the directory.
       Changesets can reflect any set of changes to the keyring.   Changesets  can  also  include
       arbitrary  metadata.  The  jetring-gen(1)  command can be used to compare two keyrings and
       generate a changeset from one to the other.

       Changesets are never removed or modified, only new ones added, using the jetring-accept(1)
       command.

       There's an ordering of the changesets. This ordering is stored in an index file. The index
       file is only appended to, to add new changesets.

       Changesets can be fully examined to see what change they make before  applying  them.  The
       jetring-review(1) and jetring-diff(1) commands can be used for such review.

       To  create  a  new  keyring,  or  incrementally update an existing keyring, changesets are
       applied in order using the jetring-build(1) command.

GPG SIGNATURES

       The index file can optionally be gpg signed (the signature will be stored  in  index.gpg);
       if  JETRING_SIGN  is  set to point to a gpg keyring, then jetring commands that operate on
       the jetring directory will always check that the index file is signed with one of the keys
       from that keyring. Commands that modify the index file will update its signature.

CHANGESET FORMAT

       A  changeset  file consists of one or more stanzas, separated by blank lines.  The stanzas
       are in RFC-822-like format. Each stanza must have an action field, which  specifies  which
       action  to  take  on  the  keyring,  and a data field, typically a multi-line field, which
       contains the data to feed to the action. Supported actions are:

       import The data field should be an ascii-armored gpg key  block,  that  is  fed  into  gpg
              --import.

       edit-key keyid
              gpg  --edit-key  is  run  on the specified key id. The data field is a script, each
              line in it is passed in to gpg, the same as if gpg were being driven interactively.
              This can be used to make arbitrary changes to the key.

       delete-key keyid
              The given key is deleted. The data is fed into gpg --delete-key, and should be "y",
              since gpg expects that confirmation to deleting a key.

       Other fields can be  added  as  desired  to  hold  metadata  about  the  change.   Typical
       additional fields include date, changed-by, and comment.

       Changesets  can  be  optionally  have  attached  signatures,  although  such  data  is not
       automatically validated and is mostly useful to record who submitted or signed  off  on  a
       given changeset.

AUTHOR

       Joey Hess, <joey@kitenet.net>.

                                                                                       JETRING(7)