Use environment variable / HOME for loading puttykeyfile

Question

I am using two different computers which access a git repository that is in a common network path. I am authenticating via pageant / TortoiseGitplink. My SSH private key is saved under C:\Users\%USERNAME%\private.ppk.

At the moment, each time I switch computers, I need to re-set the puttykeyfile to the other users home directory. I want to automatically load the puttykeyfile from the HOME directory on both machines.

I already tried to set up an environment variable on each machine with HOME=c:\users\userX and added puttykeyfile = $HOME\\private.ppk or puttykeyfile = %HOME%\\private.ppk to the .git\config, however, each time I get Unable to open File from Pageant. If I run pageant %HOME%\private.ppk from the command line it works like a charm!

How can I make TortoiseGitPLink find the private.ppk automatically within the home dir?

Answer 1

TortoiseGit does not support environment variables for the putty key values (as of 2.11.0).

Possible workarounds could be

• to define the puttykey in the global git config (which resides in %HOME%\.gitconfig),
• define a default key in a PuTTY session (cf. https://tortoisegit.org/docs/tortoisegit/tgit-ssh-howto.html) or
• use the putty agent to load a key e.g. on startup of the computer.