The svn+ssh protocol must be setuped using both the private and the public ssh key.
In case of in the Windows usage you have to setup the ssh key before run the
svn client using these general steps related to the native Windows svn.exe
(should not be a ported one, for example, like the msys
or cygwin
tools which is not fully native):
- Install the
putty
client.
- Generate the key using the
puttygen.exe
utility and the correct type of
the key dependent on the svn hub server (Ed25519, RSA, DSA, etc).
- Install the been generated public variant of the key into the svn hub server by reading the steps from the docs to the server.
- Create the
SVN_SSH
environment variable with this content: SVN_SSH="<path-to-plink>/plink.exe" -batch -l "<USERNAME>"
. This would avoid hangs in scripts because of interactive login/password request and would avoid usage svn repository urls with the user name inside.
- Ensure that all svn working copies and the
externals
properties in them contains valid svn repository urls with the svn+ssh://
prefix. If not then use the svn relocate https:// svn+ssh://
command to switch onto it. Then fix all the rest urls in the externals
properties, for example, just by remove the url scheme prefix and leave the //
prefix instead.
- Run the
pageant.exe
in the background with the previously generated private key (add it).
- Test the connection to the svn hub server through the
putty.exe
client. The client should not ask for the password if the pageant.exe
is up and running with has been correctly setuped private key. The client should not ask for the user name either if the SVN_SSH
environment variable is declared with the user name.
The git
client basically is a part of ported msys
or cygwin
tools, which means they behaves a kind of differently.
The one of the issues with the message Can't create session: Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'svn+ssh://...': Error in child process: exec of '' failed: No such file or directory at .../Git/mingw64/share/perl5/Git/SVN.pm line 310.
is the issue with the SVN_SSH
environment variable. The variable should be defined with an utility from the same tools just like the git
itself. The attempt to use it with the standalone plink.exe
from the putty
application would end with that message.
So, additionally to the steps for the svn.exe
application you should apply, for example, these steps:
- Drop the usage of the
SVN_SSH
environment variable and remove it.
- Run the
ssh-pageant
from the msys
or cygwin
tools (the putty
's pageant
must be already run with the valid private key). You can read about it, for example, from here: https://github.com/cuviper/ssh-pageant
ssh-pageant is a tiny tool for Windows that allows you to use SSH keys from PuTTY's Pageant in Cygwin and MSYS shell environments.
- Create the environment variable returned by the
ssh-pageant
from the stdout, for example: SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-hNnaPz/agent.2024
.
- Use urls in the
git svn ...
commands together with the user name as stated in the documentation (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-svn#Documentation/git-svn.txt---usernameltusergt ): svn+ssh://<USERNAME>@svn.<url>.com/repo
--username=<user>
For transports that SVN handles authentication for (http, https, and plain svn), specify the username. For other transports (e.g. svn+ssh://), you must include the username in the URL, e.g. svn+ssh://foo@svn.bar.com/project
These instructions should help to use git svn
commands together with the svn
commands.