Thanks guys — I was afraid it was something like that. I absolutely hate it when Mac software litters stuff outside of its bundle without even asking the user. Plenty of people figured it out correctly — GitHub.app, for example, installs a copy of the git command-line tools into its ./Content/Resources/git, and remains self-contained and clean.
GPGTools guys — if you're reading this thread, please please stop installing stuff outside your plugin's bundles.
It seems to still do that, however I have not had any problems installing gpg2 via homebrew and overwriting the destination binary, e.g.,
brew link gpg2 --overwrite
It's "self-contained" in /usr/local/MacGPG2.
Only creates symlinks into /usr/local/bin but will avoid that if it recognizes another gpg already being linked there.
Also, linking warnings when using homebrew's GPG are resolved.
I see. This isn't clean enough for my tastes. I run Homebrew from a custom directory, not /usr/local, and I want to make GPGMail refer to the gpg binary there. No Mac app installer should ever write anything to /usr/local.
PS: If you are a maintainer, thank you for all the hard work. I'm only criticizing the current installation system because I really want to use GPGMail, and it does not fit into the way I like to set up my machine.
There is a "Customize" option in the installer that seems to provide an option to not install MacGPG, but I haven't tried that to make sure.
Yes, you can choose to install GPGMail, GPGPreferences, etc., without MacGPG, and use your own gpg binaries such as from homebrew.
It would be far cleaner if it was more self-contained (e.g., included GPG inside its installation bundle), and then let the user pick an alternative OpenPGP installation in the preferences.