In order to support IE, which does not run reliably under linux with
ie4linux, I have to stick with M$ windows when working on dojo. However, the experience with windows svn client was not pleasant: as svn+ssh protocol is used to access dojo repository (among other svn repositories I use), I had to input my password each and every time when I update/commit to it. What’s more annoying, when doing some operation, such as svn log, I am asked three times for password (or maybe twice?).
I had hoped the svn client I use, TortoiseSVN, could support Public Key Authentication for svn+ssh, just as what the svn linux client can do.
Today, I had a look at the documentation of TortoiseSVN and found out that it IS INDEED possible to configure TortoiseSVN to use Public Key Authentication. It was just my assumption, it has not implemented this support, prevented me from digging into it.
The key point is to understand this: TortoiseSVN makes use of
putty behind the scenes (more specifically, it uses a derivate work of plink, a windows ssh command client). You can tell putty to login ssh with Public Key Authentication: just go to Connection -> SSH -> Auth, select the a private key file for the authentication. Under Connection -> Data, you may also fill in Auto-login username, so that you don’t need to specify the username every time you login.
If you do not already have a pair of your own private/public keys, then you may want to check out
PuTTYgen and
Using public keys for SSH authentication.
If you come from linux world, like me, and already have your own private/public keys, just import it with PuTTYgen and save the private key to a format putty recognize, then select this saved private key in the place mentioned before. You have to save the session under a name, such as dojo, in order to make it accessible to other ssh dependent applications, such as TortoiseSVN.
Don’t forget to add your public key to file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys in your subversion server.
After that, you should be able to ssh to your remote server without input your password. Next step is to tell TortoiseSVN to make use this Public Key Authentication. You don’t need to explicitly teach TortoiseSVN to use putty for ssh connection. All you need to do is in the checkout dialog of TortoiseSVN, instead of the normal host of the svn repository server, you just specify the session name (in this case, it is dojo). So instead of checking out dojo from this address:
svn+ssh://liucougar@svn.dojotoolkit.org/var/src/dojo/trunk
just use this:
svn+ssh://dojo/var/src/dojo/trunk
That’s all. TortoiseSVN can make use all the information you saved in that session for ssh connection, and you don’t need to type in password any more. That’s neat.
(As how TortoiseSVN knows about session saved in putty, here is my guess: putty stores all information of sessions in windows register, so that’s can be accessed by TortoiseSVN.)
