How to configure GnuPG's S.gpg-agent socket location?

Question

GnuPG places its socket S.gpg-agent at ~/.gnupg/S.gpg-agent by default. I didn't find any way to configure the location of this socket nor seems there to be a manpage of gpg.conf.

Background: I want to symlink ~/.gnupg to an OpenAFS mount which doesn't support sockets (and avoid to create a symlink for every file in ~/.gnupg (which is a workaround) instead of just ~/.gnupg), i.e. find the most elegant solution imo.

Solution

Since GnuPG Version 2.1.1 there exists a solution: Place a simple text-file S.gpg-agent in the gpg-homedir with following content:

%Assuan%
socket=/path/to/where/ever/you/want/S.gpg-agent

It replaces some evnvars like ${HOME} or ${HOSTNAME}

Be careful, when using a subdirectory of /tmp, because gpg-agent will not create needed directories.

Further reading at: https://dev.gnupg.org/T1752

Comments

[mirabilos]

This no longer works, cf. bugs.debian.org/935966

[Jamie]

I'd be interested in knowing why this answer was down-voted.

[Jamie]

Unfortunately, for Windows, it never did. In assuan-socket.c in libassuan, it has "#ifndef HAVE_W32 SYSTEM" around that functionality. I could really use that functionality right now.

[Hirnhamster]

Would also like to understand the downvote? It works as expected and I ran into the exact same issues. Without the additional files mentioned in the comment I would get ` error binding socket to` errors for the S.gpg-agent.extra and S.gpg-agent.ssh