ssh-pageant 1.2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Home:   http://cuviper.github.com/ssh-pageant/
Issues: http://github.com/cuviper/ssh-pageant/issues
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ssh-pageant is an SSH authentication agent for Cygwin that links OpenSSH to
PuTTY's Pageant.  It acts very much like ssh-agent, except it leaves the key
storage to Pageant.  You can use ssh-pageant to automate SSH connections from
the Cygwin shell, and I find this is most helpful for those services built on
top of SSH, like SFTP file transfers or pushing to secure git repositories.

Like ssh-agent, ssh-pageant starts by setting up the auth socket, and then it
prints the environment variables that will let openssh connections use that
socket.  The usual approach is to use your shell's "eval" command to load
those environment variables automatically.  By default, ssh-pageant outputs
sh-style commands, but the -c option will change that to csh-style commands.

For example, I just add the following lines to my bash configuration:

~/.bash_profile:
  if [ -z "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" -a -x /usr/bin/ssh-pageant ]; then
    eval $(/usr/bin/ssh-pageant -q)
  fi
  trap logout HUP

~/.bash_logout:
  if [ -x /usr/bin/ssh-pageant -a ! -z "$SSH_PAGEANT_PID" ]; then
    eval $(/usr/bin/ssh-pageant -qk 2>/dev/null)
  fi

This will start a new ssh-pageant instance for each login shell.  That's not a
big deal since they all talk to the same Pageant instance, so you only have to
add your ssh keys once.  You could also rename ssh-pageant to ssh-agent and
then use something like keychain to manage a single instance, but I don't find
that necessary.

Note that Pageant itself is not started by ssh-pageant.  It is recommended to
add Pageant to the Windows startup configuration so it is always available.

If Pageant is running, but the agent still reports SSH_AGENT_FAILURE, this
might be an old SID bug.  This is believed to be generally fixed in release
1.1, but it also requires updating Pageant to version 0.62 or later.  The other
known workaround is to launch Pageant using cygstart.

History: Once upon a time I privately developed a Cygwin terminal based on
PuTTY, which I wanted because I could use Cygwin-native ptys with PuTTY's
interface.  As part of that I also added an SSH_AUTH_SOCK shim which talked to
Pageant.  Then I discovered MinTTY, which does the terminal part much better.
The author wasn't interested in including the SSH_AUTH_SOCK functionality
though, so instead I split that out into this program, ssh-pageant, and I
finally published the code in April 2009.

Version History:
* Sat Nov 24 2012 - 1.2 - mirror the exit status of child processes
* Tue Dec 06 2011 - 1.1 - fixed SID issues
* Mon Sep 20 2010 - 1.0 - initial release

Links:
* PuTTY: An SSH client, including the Pageant authentication agent.
  http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
* Cygwin: A Linux-like environment for Windows.
  http://www.cygwin.com/
* OpenSSH: The SSH client shipped by Cygwin.
  http://www.openssh.com/
* Charade: The friendly competition to ssh-pageant.
  http://github.com/wesleyd/charade

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (C) 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012  Josh Stone
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later, http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

See the file COPYING for license details.  Part of ssh-pageant is derived from
the PuTTY program, whose original license is in the file COPYING.PuTTY.