> excuse me, gpg-agent might have been introduced in 2003, but it was > optional. Until not long ago, it was still possible to decrypt file with > password, without having the agent. If you were using GnuPG 1.4, yes. GnuPG 2.0 and later have always used gpg-agent. If you want a gpg-agent free version of GnuPG, use version 1.4.