Re: Specifying a private key when connecting to a remote SSH repo

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 12, 2013, 15:43 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq1u4uqc3q.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20130912051913.GA1977@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> We already have GIT_SSH, so I would expect:
>
>   GIT_SSH='ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/id_for_example_com' git push
>
> to work. But sadly, GIT_SSH does not use the shell, unlike most other
> configure git commands. :(

You read me correctly ;-)

> We could consider it a consistency bug and fix it, though I suspect we
> may be annoying people on Windows who have spaces in their paths.

Again, you read me correctly ;-)

> You could write a credential helper shell script that knows about
> classes of remotes (e.g., selecting an identity file based on the
> hostname), and write only a few lines to cover a large number of hosts.

Yes, but the same trick can be used in $HOME/.ssh/config to let one entry cover the same large number of hosts, so...

Show 14 quoted lines

> For example:
>
>   #!/bin/sh
>   test "$1" = "get" || exit 0
>   while IFS== read key val; do
>     test "$key" = "host" || continue
>     case "$val" in
>       *.example.com) echo sshident=com_key ;;
>       *.example.net) echo sshident=net_key ;;
>     esac
>   done
>
> But it feels a bit hacky to be using the credential helpers at all for
> ssh connections.

Yeah, perhaps.