How to Setup SSH Authentication for Git Bash on Windows

I originally created this as a Gist on GitHub to be shared with some co-workers who were struggling to set up SSH on Windows. It seems to have been helpful to a lot of others as well; so, I'm posting it here so that it can benefit even more people.

Preparation

1. Create a folder at the root of your user home folder (Example: C:/Users/uname/) called .ssh.
2. 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

You're Done!

Please, feel free to ask any questions that you may have in the comments, I’m more than happy to help.

Comments

[Jason Priddy]

Thank you very much, this worked great!

[Formulated Paul]

Hi,

Is the final step still required? I'm running Git for Windows and SSH seems to work fine without setting the agent to start. Unless I set it in the past and have forgotten...

[Brandon Sarà]

If it's working then you should be good. It's been quite a while since I've actually used windows for anything and given their efforts to integrate Linux features into the OS, it is possible that it is no longer necessary.

[Formulated Paul]

Thank you!