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gpa

GNU Privacy Assistant — a GTK front end to GnuPG for signed and encrypted traffic

What it does

A graphical front end to GnuPG: manage keys, sign, verify, encrypt and decrypt files and clipboard text without the gpg command line. The key manager, file manager and clipboard windows are the whole program.

Why you would want it

Signed traffic. EMCOMM nets that authenticate messages -- AmRRON's workflow is the one EmComm Tools built this in for -- sign and verify with PGP keys, and an operator handling traffic at a keyboard under pressure wants a window, not a man page. Kleopatra is the KDE alternative and pulls in much more; Seahorse is GNOME's key manager and does less with files.

Before it will work

GnuPG installed (it is, as a dependency) and a keypair, which GPA can generate. Nothing radio-specific: the signed text goes over whatever mode you use.

How it installs

  • apt: gpa — on ubuntu, linuxmint
  • source (autotools) from https://www.gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/gpa/gpa-0.11.1.tar.bz2
  • build dependencies: pkg-config, libgtk-3-dev, libgpg-error-dev, libassuan-dev, libgpgme-dev, gettext

Binaries this produces:

  • src/gpa

Known problems

Debian dropped the package, so on Debian 13, Parrot and Kali it is built from the gnupg.org tarball; on the Ubuntu family the archive's older 0.10.0 or 0.11.0 is used instead, and the version differs by target for that reason. The source build installs the gpa binary and a generated launcher; upstream's own desktop file and icons are not installed. GTK 3.

Keeping it current

  • probe: binary version
  • strategy: rebuild
  • Releases are rare (0.10.0 in 2018, 0.11.0 in 2024, 0.11.1 in 2026) and announced on gnupg-announce; each ships a detached signature beside the tarball. Verify the signature before bumping the hash.

Where to get help with the software itself

The gnupg-users list and dev.gnupg.org; GPA is maintained inside the GnuPG project.

Source: catalog/packages/gpa.yaml