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tortoiseplink ssh variant still needed?

Subject: tortoiseplink ssh variant still needed?

## tl;dr

5 messages between Oct 22, 2021 and Oct 25, 2021.

replies: 4people: 4as markdown or json

Sven Strickroth· Oct 22, 2021, 16:13 UTC · lore
Hi,
Git differentiates between different variants of SSH tools.

One variant is the tortoiseplink variant. When this is configured Git passes passes a special "--batch" parameter and passes the port using "-P" (capitalized P) t the SSH tool.

IIRC tortoiseplink was initially created by TortoiseCVS which is nowadays not maintained any more (<http://www.tortoisecvs.org/download.shtml>). In TortoiseSVN and TortoiseGit tortoiseplink was modified six years ago (around 2015-03-07) to ignore the "--batch" parameter and also accept "-p" additionally to "-P" (cf. <https://osdn.net/projects/tortoisesvn/scm/svn/commits/26348>).

Therefore, my first question: Does Git still want to support very old versions of tortoiseplink or should I provide a patch which drops support for it?

Second question: TortoiseGit comes with an even more improved version of TortoisePLink (named TortoiseGitPLink, but also ships the same binary as tortoiseplink) that also accepts "-o SetEnv=..." parameters in order to support the Git protocol version 2. At the moment TortoiseGit automatically sets the environment variable "GIT_SSH_VARIANT=ssh". This works, but is not perfect if other parameter of OpenSSH are used. Would it make sense to add a new ssh variant tortoisegitplink? If yes, how to handle new versions that might also support even more OpenSSH command line parameters?

-- 
Best regards,
  Sven Strickroth
  PGP key id F5A9D4C4 @ any key-server
Sven Strickroth· Oct 22, 2021, 16:45 UTC · re: Sven Strickroth · lore

[PATCH] Drop unneeded special handling of ssh variant tortoiseplink

"-p" is supported and "--batch" is ignored in TortoisePLink from TortoiseSVN and TortoiseGit since at least March 2015 (and TortoiseCVS is not maintained any more). Therefore, there is no need any more to keep these parameters for ancient versions of tortoiseplink.

Signed-off-by: Sven Strickroth <email@cs-ware.de>
---
 Documentation/config/ssh.txt | 2 +-
 connect.c                    | 5 +----
 t/t5601-clone.sh             | 4 ++--
 3 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/config/ssh.txt b/Documentation/config/ssh.txt
index 2ca4bf93e1..3902c8371d 100644
--- a/Documentation/config/ssh.txt
+++ b/Documentation/config/ssh.txt
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ follows:
 
 * `plink` or `putty` - [-P port] [-4] [-6] [username@]host command
 
-* `tortoiseplink` - [-P port] [-4] [-6] -batch [username@]host command
+* `tortoiseplink` - [-p port] [-4] [-6] [username@]host command
 
 --
 +
diff --git a/connect.c b/connect.c
index eaf7d6d261..2628c2fc17 100644
--- a/connect.c
+++ b/connect.c
@@ -1269,9 +1269,6 @@ static void push_ssh_options(struct strvec *args, struct strvec *env,
 		}
 	}
 
-	if (variant == VARIANT_TORTOISEPLINK)
-		strvec_push(args, "-batch");
-
 	if (port) {
 		switch (variant) {
 		case VARIANT_AUTO:
@@ -1279,11 +1276,11 @@ static void push_ssh_options(struct strvec *args, struct strvec *env,
 		case VARIANT_SIMPLE:
 			die(_("ssh variant 'simple' does not support setting port"));
 		case VARIANT_SSH:
+		case VARIANT_TORTOISEPLINK:
 			strvec_push(args, "-p");
 			break;
 		case VARIANT_PLINK:
 		case VARIANT_PUTTY:
-		case VARIANT_TORTOISEPLINK:
 			strvec_push(args, "-P");
 		}
 
diff --git a/t/t5601-clone.sh b/t/t5601-clone.sh
index 83c24fc97a..41e1670328 100755
--- a/t/t5601-clone.sh
+++ b/t/t5601-clone.sh
@@ -430,7 +430,7 @@ test_expect_success 'plink.exe is treated specially (as putty)' '
 test_expect_success 'tortoiseplink is like putty, with extra arguments' '
 	copy_ssh_wrapper_as "$TRASH_DIRECTORY/tortoiseplink" &&
 	git clone "[myhost:123]:src" ssh-bracket-clone-plink-2 &&
-	expect_ssh "-batch -P 123" myhost src
+	expect_ssh "-p 123" myhost src
 '
 
 test_expect_success 'double quoted plink.exe in GIT_SSH_COMMAND' '
@@ -472,7 +472,7 @@ test_expect_success 'GIT_SSH_VARIANT overrides plink to tortoiseplink' '
 	copy_ssh_wrapper_as "$TRASH_DIRECTORY/plink" &&
 	GIT_SSH_VARIANT=tortoiseplink \
 	git clone "[myhost:123]:src" ssh-bracket-clone-variant-4 &&
-	expect_ssh "-batch -P 123" myhost src
+	expect_ssh "-p 123" myhost src
 '
 
 test_expect_success 'clean failure on broken quoting' '

-- 
2.33.1.windows.1
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason· Oct 23, 2021, 09:57 UTC · re: Sven Strickroth · lore

Re: [PATCH] Drop unneeded special handling of ssh variant tortoiseplink

On Fri, Oct 22 2021, Sven Strickroth wrote:
> "-p" is supported and "--batch" is ignored in TortoisePLink from
> TortoiseSVN and TortoiseGit since at least March 2015 (and TortoiseCVS
> is not maintained any more). Therefore, there is no need any more to
> keep these parameters for ancient versions of tortoiseplink.
In reply to your other mail:
> Therefore, my first question: Does Git still want to support very old
> versions of tortoiseplink or should I provide a patch which drops 
> support for it?

The answer is it depends, in some cases we support >10 year old software because it's in wide use, so some sort of vague estimate of how much this is likely to impact users would be helpful, i.e. are users who are using a modern git likely to have a modern version of the software as well, or do they mix & match?

Junio C Hamano· Oct 23, 2021, 21:53 UTC · re: Sven Strickroth · lore

Re: tortoiseplink ssh variant still needed?

Sven Strickroth <email@cs-ware.de> writes:
Show 11 quoted lines
> IIRC tortoiseplink was initially created by TortoiseCVS which is
> nowadays not maintained any more 
> (<http://www.tortoisecvs.org/download.shtml>).
> In TortoiseSVN and TortoiseGit tortoiseplink was modified six years
> ago (around 2015-03-07) to ignore the "--batch" parameter and also
> accept "-p" additionally to "-P"  (cf. 
> <https://osdn.net/projects/tortoisesvn/scm/svn/commits/26348>).
>
> Therefore, my first question: Does Git still want to support very old
> versions of tortoiseplink or should I provide a patch which drops 
> support for it?

You sent the question to me so I am answering, but this depends on (1) who the users who use TortoisePlink are and (2) by dropping support for it, what we would gain.

I am guessing that nobody other than those on Windows use TortoisePlink, and that everybody other than those who build their own Git from source use Dscho's Git-for-Windows, and I further assume that the GfW comes with its own copy of OpenSSH.

So our intended audience is those who started using Git on Windows back when TortoisePlink was still a thing, are still happily using TortoisePlink, and are willing to only update Git but not migrate to OpenSSH. How big that audience is, I do not know, as I do not do Windows.

How much maintenance burden is the "support" costing us? A quick scan in connect.c tells me that the "add --batch to the command line" would be the only thing we would be able to shed; everything else seems to be shared with plink and putty.

So...?
Johannes Schindelin· Oct 25, 2021, 13:04 UTC · re: Junio C Hamano · lore

Re: tortoiseplink ssh variant still needed?

Hi Junio,
On Sat, 23 Oct 2021, Junio C Hamano wrote:
Show 18 quoted lines
> Sven Strickroth <email@cs-ware.de> writes:
>
> > Therefore, my first question: Does Git still want to support very old
> > versions of tortoiseplink or should I provide a patch which drops
> > support for it?
>
> [...]
>
> I am guessing that nobody other than those on Windows use
> TortoisePlink, and that everybody other than those who build their
> own Git from source use Dscho's Git-for-Windows, and I further
> assume that the GfW comes with its own copy of OpenSSH.
>
> So our intended audience is those who started using Git on Windows
> back when TortoisePlink was still a thing, are still happily using
> TortoisePlink, and are willing to only update Git but not migrate to
> OpenSSH.  How big that audience is, I do not know, as I do not do
> Windows.

Nobody really knows, but we started discouraging `plink` usage (also `tortoiseplink` usage) already way back in the msysGit days. AFAIR we simply ran into too much trouble, and started to only offer `plink` as an option if the user had _any_ PuTTY saved sessions.

> How much maintenance burden is the "support" costing us?  A quick
> scan in connect.c tells me that the "add --batch to the command
> line" would be the only thing we would be able to shed; everything
> else seems to be shared with plink and putty.

Since I have to assume a very small usership, I would think that we can drop support for the older `tortoiseplink`. But you're right, what does it _buy_ us?

My guess is that Sven wants to go further and enable the `-o SetEnv` thing for protocol v2 (which we figured out together, over in the Git for Windows bug tracker, to be turned off when pushing). But that would require the `tortoisegitplink` variant, I think.

So maybe a better idea would be to focus on introducing support for `tortoisegitplink` and work on the `-o SetEnv` issue, and leave the `--batch` code alone for now.

Ciao, Dscho

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