The default setup for the Mercurial DVCS on Windows with tortoisehg uses plink and Pageant to manage SSH keys when you are using ssh as the transport protocol for mercurial. That’s most likely the right choice for a normal Windows setup, but if you already have openssh installed and configured to talk to various servers, it’s easy to switch mercurial and tortoisehg to use openssh. It’s also very helpful if you’re forgetful like me and forget to start pageant, add new keys to it etc.

Just add or modify the ssh setting in the [ui] section of your .hgrc. In my case, I’m using very basic settings and already have the ssh executable in my path so my settings look like this:

<br /> [ui]<br /> ... settings ...<br /> ssh = ssh -2 -C -x<br />

In order for this to work, $HOME must be set such that openssh can find the existing private keys and configuration in $HOME/.ssh. Set the ssh parameters to your personal preference, in my case I’m requesting it to use ssh protocol v2 only (-2), disable X forwarding because I don’t need it (-x) and enable compression (-C).