Re: gpg verification slows down my gnus

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

Chris Beggy <chrisb@kippona.com> writes:

>> > Function Name                  Call Count  Elapsed Time  Average Time
>> > =============================  ==========  ============  ============
>> > gpg-verify                     1           16.663583     16.663583
>> > gpg-with-temp-files-create     1           0.03351       0.03351
>> > gpg-make-temp-file             2           0.033345      0.0166725
>> > gpg-with-temp-files-delete     1           0.000525      0.000525
>> > gpg-build-arg-list             1           6.4e-05       6.4e-05
>> > gpg-exec-path                  1           1.8e-05       1.8e-05
>> > 
>> > gpg is byte compiled.  What can I do to speed this up?
>> 
>> The time is probably spent in the external "gpg" application, most likely
>> trying to retrieve keys from a keyserver.  The elisp processing required
>> is minimal.
>
> This profile was for a verification of a key on my keyring.  Does
> gpg go and fetch before it checks the local keyring?

I guess not.  Do you have a large keyring?  I find gpg becomes slow if
the keyring is large.

>> Asynchronous security verification would be quite useful.  Patches, 
>> anyone? :-)
>
> mew seems to do this, somehow checking sigs after the mail is
> read in from the spool and while it is being summarized.
> Then, I think it caches the result (verified, not verified, key
> unreachable) for a time, so that re-reads don't generate new gpg
> verification calls.

That could work, altough you might end up with stale data.

> For comparison, I tried to write out the message from gnus (X O)
> and then run gpg on the command line, gpg --verify
> message.txt. This wouldn't complete.
>
> What's the right way to do that?

Another way would be to simply display the message immediately, and
launch gpg in the background.  When gpg finishes, the article buffer
is updated with the information.