Gitsign Overview

Gitsign implements keyless Sigstore to sign Git commits with a valid OpenID identity. In practice, that means you won’t need GPG keys and a complicated setup in order to sign your Git commits. After installing and configuring Gitsign within your project and signing your commits, you will be redirected to a browser window to authenticate with a supported OpenID provider, such as GitHub or Google. Signing details will then be stored in Rekor for subsequent verification.

Gitsign is part of the Sigstore project. Join us on our Slack channel if you want to learn more or get involved. Join our Slack channel with this invite.

Quick Start

Gitsign can be installed via the Go installer, with Homebrew, or with one of the package installers available on the project releases page. These include .deb and .rpm formats for Debian and Fedora systems, respectively. Check the installation page for more details on how to get Gitsign installed on your system.

Once configured, you can sign commits as usual with git commit -s:

$ git commit -s --allow-empty --message="Signed commit"
[main cb6eee1] Signed commit

This will redirect you through the Sigstore Keyless flow to authenticate and sign the commit.

Commits can then be verified using git log:

$ git --no-pager log --show-signature -1

commit 227e796042fdd170e58b7e3b7627a1badd320224 (HEAD -> main)
searching tlog for commit: 227e796042fdd170e58b7e3b7627a1badd320224
tlog index: 2212633
smimesign: Signature made using certificate ID 0x815ada5516906a862af8f528d69d3c86e4774b4f | CN=sigstore,O=sigstore.dev
smimesign: Good signature from "" ([billy@chainguard.dev])
Author: Billy Lynch <billy@chainguard.dev>
Date:   Mon May 2 16:51:44 2022 -0400

    Signed commit

Environment Variables