Allow Removing Identity-file Passphrase Protection

[inferenceus]

Once an identity-file has been passphrase-protected via age-keygen | age -p > <identity file>, the passphrase-protection cannot be removed.

I have looked through the man-pages, GitHub repository's README, GitHub Issues, and GitHub Discussions, but have not found any way to do this.

A use-case for this feature is if an identity-file has been moved from an unprotected filesystem to a protected one (e.g. from unencrypted to LUKS), which provides the protection for it and a second layer isn't required.

[BuriedInTheGround]

Say your protected identity file is key.age, you can use age -d -o key.txt key.age and insert the passphrase to put the corresponding unprotected identity to the key.txt file. Then, you can delete key.age, if you don't need that anymore.

[inferenceus]

@BuriedInTheGround

Say your protected identity file is key.age, you can use age -d -o key.txt key.age and insert the passphrase to put the corresponding unprotected identity to the key.txt file. Then, you can delete key.age, if you don't need that anymore.

So, it's the same as a standard age-encrypted file? It's just treated the same way, as if a plaintext file which was encrypted via symmetric encryption?

[BuriedInTheGround]

Yes, precisely. Indeed, <any command writing to stdout> | age -p > <whatever filename> creates a <whatever filename> age file symmetrically encrypted with the given passphrase (via scrypt).

[inferenceus]

@BuriedInTheGround

Yes, precisely. Indeed, <any command writing to stdout> | age -p > <whatever filename> creates a <whatever filename> age file symmetrically encrypted with the given passphrase (via scrypt).

A very-nice implementation, as usual with age. Thank you.