But yeah, General Error is never good :)

The same happens when the pinentry is canceled, i.e. General Error is reported although in this case the dialog should simply be closed (because the user canceled the operation).

Ok maybe because of the task description with timeout. But for a Cancel to report "General Error" that is unacceptable.

I edited the task description.

I reprodcued this with a simple: "gpgtar --status-fd 2 --verbose --create --sign -u foo@bar vimfiles > foo.tar.gpg" on the command line. Which gives me the proper status lines but then ends up in kleo with general error.

You are creating a signed archiv? Why - gpgtar is used for encryption.

As discussed in chat has nothing to do with only signing. Only that signing makes it easier to get errors by cancelling pinentry or entering bad passwords.

works, VS-Desktop-3.1.90.287-Beta

Fixing gpg is easy but there is some bug lingering in gpgme which might be a recent regression. An strace shows

450   +++ exited with 2 +++
438   poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 1 ([{fd=6, revents=POLLHUP}])
438   read(6, "", 4096)                 = 0
438   close(6)                          = 0
438   poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=9, events=POLLOUT}], 2, 1000) = 2 ([{fd=4, revents=POLLHUP}, {fd=9, revents=POLLERR}])
438   poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 1 ([{fd=4, revents=POLLHUP}])
438   read(4, "", 1024)                 = 0
438   write(2, "status_cb:  \n", 13)    = 13
438   close(4)                          = 0
438   poll([{fd=9, events=POLLOUT}], 1, 1000) = 1 ([{fd=9, revents=POLLERR}])

and keeps on polling after the gpg process (450) teminated.

Arghh, a GPGME_DEBUG=3 which shows basic I/O preparation does not exhibit the bug.