org.eclipse.jgit.ssh.apache.agent/README.md

# JGit SSH agent transport support for Apache MINA sshd

This bundle provides optional support for communicating with an SSH agent
for SSH or SFTP authentication. It is an OSGi fragment for bundle
[org.eclipse.jgit.ssh.apache](../org.eclipse.jgit.ssh.apache/README.md),
and it provides transports for local communication with SSH agents.

## Supported SSH agent transports

### Linux, OS X, BSD

On Linux, OS X, and BSD, the only transport mechanism supported is the usual
communication via a Unix domain socket. This is the only protocol the OpenSSH
SSH agent supports. A Unix domain socket appears as a special file in the file
system; this file name is typically available in the environment variable
`SSH_AUTH_SOCK`.

The SSH config `IdentityAgent` can be set to this socket filename to specify
exactly which Unix domain socket to use, or it can be set to `SSH_AUTH_SOCK`
to use the value from that environment variable. If `IdentityAgent` is not set
at all, JGit uses `SSH_AUTH_SOCK` by default. If the variable is not set, no
SSH agent will be used. `IdentityAgent` can also be set to `none` to not use
any SSH agent.

### Windows

On Windows, two different transports are supported:

* A transport over a Windows named pipe. This is used by Win32-OpenSSH, and is available for Pageant since version 0.75.
* A Pageant-specific legacy transport via shared memory; useful for Pageant and GPG's gpg-agent.

Possible settings of `IdentityAgent` to select a particular transport are

* `//./pipe/openssh-ssh-agent`: the Windows named pipe of Win32-OpenSSH.
* `//./pageant`: the shared-memory mechanism of Pageant.
* `none`: do not use any SSH agent.
* `//./pipe/<any_valid_pipe_name>`: use a specific Windows named pipe.

The default transport on Windows if `IdentityAgent` is not set at all is the
Pageant shared-memory transport. Environment variable `SSH_AUTH_SOCK` needs
not be set for Pageant, and _must not_ be set for Win32-OpenSSH.

It is also possible to use a named pipe as transport for Pageant (as of
version 0.75). Unfortunately, Pageant unnecessarily cryptographically
obfuscates the pipe name, so it is not possible for JGit to determine it
automatically. The pipe name is `pageant.<user name>.<sha256>`, for instance
`pageant.myself.c5687736ba755a70b000955cb191698aed7db221c2b0710199eb1f5298922ab5`.
A user can look up the name by starting Pageant and then running the
command `dir \\.\pipe\\` in a command shell. Once the name is known, setting
`IdentityAgent` to the pipe name as
`//./pipe/pageant.myself.c5687736ba755a70b000955cb191698aed7db221c2b0710199eb1f5298922ab5`
makes JGit use this Windows named pipe for communication with Pageant.

(You can use forward slashes in the `~/.ssh/config` file. SSH config file
parsing has its own rules about backslashes in config files; which are
treated as escape characters in some contexts. With backslashes one would
have to write, e.g., `\\\\.\pipe\openssh-ssh-agent`.)

With these two transport mechanisms, Pageant and Win32-OpenSSH are supported.
As for GPG: the gpg-agent can be configured to emulate ssh-agent (presumably
via a WinSockets2 "Unix domain socket" on Windows) or to emulate Pageant
(using the shared memory mechanism). Running gpg-agent with the
`enable-ssh-support` option is
[reported not to work on Windows](https://dev.gnupg.org/T3883), though. But
the PuTTY emulation in gpg-agent (option `enable-putty-support`) _should_ work,
so it should be possible to use gpg-agent instead of Pageant.

Neither Pageant (as of version 0.76) nor Win32-OpenSSH (as of version 8.6)
support the `confirm` or lifetime constraints for `AddKeysToAgent`. gpg-agent
apparently does, even when communicating over the Pageant shared memory
mechanism.

The ssh-agent from git bash on Windows is currently not supported. It would
need a connector handling Cygwin socket files and the Cygwin handshake over
a TCP stream socket bound to the loopback interface. The Cygwin socket file
_is_ exposed in the Windows file system at %TEMP%\ssh-XXXXXXXXXX\agent.&lt;number>,
but it does not have a fixed name (the X's and the number are variable and
change each time ssh-agent is started).

## Implementation

The implementation of all transports uses JNA.