Setup SSH Authentication for Git Bash on Windows

git-ssh-auth-win-setup.md

Setup SSH Authentication for Git Bash on Windows

Prepararation

0. Create a folder at the root of your user home folder (Example: C:/Users/uname/) called .ssh.
1. Create the following files if they do not already exist (paths begin from the root of your user home folder):
   • .ssh/config
   • .bash_profile
   • .bashrc

Create a New SSH Key

Follow the steps in the section named "Generating a new SSH Key" found in the following documentation from GitHub: Generating a new SSH key and adding it to the ssh-agent

Configure SSH for Git Hosting Server

Add the following text to .ssh/config (.ssh should be found in the root of your user home folder):

Host github.com
 Hostname github.com
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Enable SSH Agent Startup Whenever Git Bash is Started

First, ensure that following lines are added to .bash_profile, which should be found in your root user home folder:

test -f ~/.profile && . ~/.profile
test -f ~/.bashrc && . ~/.bashrc

Now, add the following text to .bashrc, which should be found in your root user home folder:

# Start SSH Agent
#----------------------------

SSH_ENV="$HOME/.ssh/environment"

function run_ssh_env {
  . "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
}

function start_ssh_agent {
  echo "Initializing new SSH agent..."
  ssh-agent | sed 's/^echo/#echo/' > "${SSH_ENV}"
  echo "succeeded"
  chmod 600 "${SSH_ENV}"

  run_ssh_env;

  ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa;
}

if [ -f "${SSH_ENV}" ]; then
  run_ssh_env;
  ps -ef | grep ${SSH_AGENT_PID} | grep ssh-agent$ > /dev/null || {
    start_ssh_agent;
  }
else
  start_ssh_agent;
fi