So, the solution is to build pinentry with newer ncurses. As I wrote in another comment, it's adding a single line to the formula.

The functionality to create CSRs can be hidden with the setting

[CMS]
AllowCertificateCreation=false

The default validity period can be specified in the configuration file with

[CertificateCreationWizard]
ValidityPeriodInDays=42

Also, applied the part 2, improving basic.c.

Applied the part 3, the 3DES is no-FIPS patch.

Quick gen key is only used for the keygen in GpgOL and KMail. Kleopatra itself uses the old batch generate interface.

Applied the part 4, the indicator patch.

The change for pubkey-util.c is not needed any more, because

• T5665 handles new functions rejects use of SHA-1 as approved signature.
• pubkey-util.c is used by gcry_pk_sign and gcry_pk_verify.

Thank you for the info.

--quick-gen-key supports this but there is no general option; the 2 years are hard coded.

I ran DYLD_PRINT_LIBRARIES=1 DYLD_PRINT_LIBRARIES_POST_LAUNCH=1 DYLD_PRINT_RPATHS=1 pinentry-curses and see libncurses.5.4 (full output below).

Is there some other command I should run to check which curses it's using? I see there's a --debug flag but I'm not sure how to use it.

I think that either of following might be true:
(1) macOS has older ncurses (which doesn't support ioctl well, to get columns/lines info) in system
(2) macOS has BSD curses (with no suport for ioctl)

I installed it with brew and didn't provide any special options. This is one of the new M1 macs though, so perhaps there is some platform check deep in the install that is getting confused?

Thank you for the information. So, you don't have these environment variables set.

printenv COLUMNS LINES shows no output, however if I echo $COLUMNS $LINES I see 160 48 both before and after the password prompt.

Curses application (of pinentry) get information of screen size by:

• environment variables (COLUMNS, LINES)
• operating system using TIOCGSIZE or TIOCGWINSZ ioctl
• tinfo data base

The original intention was to fix t-poll failure on Windows.
It was fixed in different way in rE858bcd4343ac: tests,w32: Use CreatePipe and es_sysopen..

When the device-side feature was proposed, I had suggested to extend the protocol so that host side can know device side requires user interaction and prompt a user. But... the result was "it can be done with device side only".

Caveat, Caveat (Warning, Warning) I know I've been quite busy with other activities, and ITMT my client status went really bad and even worse reached its final point and self-rebooted while I was trying to suspend it, but anyway this update is needed because I just discovered that my last choice to prepend %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Gpg4win\bin;%ProgramFiles(x86)%\GnuPG\bin;%PATH% was not very good. Why ? Simple, as I discovered today (few hours ago) using this syntax, will only be valid&useful only if you really want to restrict Gpg4win v3.1.16 usage only to accounts in Administrators group.
Ok, so now you're wondering: How I discovered this effect ? Again simple, desktop shortcut that I have for starting new 'Command Prompt' was modified to always run as Admin, so I have to specifically choose when I want to run it without Admin privileges, and so today, after I didn't notice I had launched Kleopatra before, right after closing it, I launched a new Command Prompt and so when I tried to run 'gpgconf --kill gpg-agent' I only received this answer :

'gpgconf' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

So then I obviously opened another 'Command Prompt' as an Admin and correctly killed gpg-agent so ensuring that everything was indeed still working as expected.
So now you're asking, why in the past I had confirmed that prepending those paths I was expecting to work, really worked ?
If you remember well how I reported Iìve done my past installations and tests, I also made those changes in OS System Environment Variables really on the fly and then just re-confirmed they were valid via GUI by simply pressing [ OK ].
And so this is the test I just repeated again and so I can re-confirm you that only after by doing so, every new 'Command Prompt' started as non Admin user will have proper access to those newly prepended paths.
Otherwise, those paths will work only for any new 'Command Prompt' if run with an account in Administrators group.
So while this can still be temporarily fine for me, I'm unsure it might have been a real standard choice for Gpg4win v3.1.16 setup run without experiencing the error I'm reporting in this bug, so please just ensure to avoid using %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Gpg4win\bin;%ProgramFiles(x86)%\GnuPG\bin; syntax when changing your paths on the fly by prepending it or appending to %PATH% even if you should try to definitely solve same error I found and reported with this bug. OK ?
Thanks for your attention (for now).

I do not like the idea of using the get_config interface for this. It should be easily usable by applications to check for single cipher/mode so int/bool return values would be preferred against the string ones (which are now used in the get_config). I am not sure if getting all the configuration in one string blob would be any use (except for some auditing) either.

Thanks for the help. After running make clean / aclocal / autoconf / autoupdate … &etc, the patch worked & make check passed all eleven 11 tests, ie the new 12th test was not performed.

Right, but SHA-256 have higher time consuption, which is always good in password stretching. Current notebooks hit maximum value for s2k_count:
$ gpg-connect-agent 'GETINFO s2k_count' /bye
D 105682944

Sorry, we won't do that. Actually SHA-1 is still allowed when used in a KDF mechanism like S2K. OpenPGp is about Public Key cryptography and for that it is important to keep the keys safe. Protection the private key with a passaord is a failstop scheme which gives time to revoke the actual key and handle the compromise. When suing symmtric encryption (gpg -c) ist is strongly sutested to use a password with at least 128 bit entropy (e.g. by using our magic wand button). The S2K iteration is actually not needed in such a case.

Thank you for your log.

Here is ”config.log", or did you want just the screen output?

Please show us the log of configure, not just the result of the failure.

I’m not that geeky anymore.

If you see wrong result for the decision of the HAVE_LOCK_OPTIMIZATION (for running the test), it's better to contribute to gnulib (https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/) for the detection of thread features.

I've just confirmed that the fixes in the commit "rE50e0f32b1935" above to configure.ca & tests/makefile.am do NOT fix the problem under MacOSX Catalina 10.15.7 using Xcode 12.4, gcc Apple clang-1200.0.32.28.