Using Pageant with VS Code Remote Development
Using Pageant with VS Code Remote Development
Copied from ‘link https://rfdonnelly.github.io/posts/vscode-remote-with-pageant/’
This article documents using Pageant to manage SSH keys for VS Code Remote.
Assumptions
VS Code and the VS Code Remote Development extension is installed
PuTTY Pageant is being used to manage SSH keys
The remote host has a corresponding public key
Introduction
VS Code Remote Development doesn’t support Pageant out of the box.[1] More specifically, VS Code Remote Development uses the Windows 10 native OpenSSH client and the OpenSSH client doesn’t support Pageant. A bridge is needed to make Pageant available to the OpenSSH client.
This is where wsl-ssh-pageant comes in. wsl-ssh-pageant can make Pageant available to WSL or the Windows OpenSSH client. We are going to use it to make Pageant available to the Windows OpenSSH client.
Install wsl-ssh-pageant
Download wsl-ssh-pageant-amd64-gui.exe from the latest release of wsl-ssh-pageant[2]
Note
The -gui version doesn’t actually provide a GUI but rather it doesn’t open a terminal while the non-gui version does. Setup wsl-ssh-pageant Open the startup directory by pressing ⊞Win+R and typing shell:startup↵
Create a .bat file with the following content[3]
@ECHO OFF
SETX SSH_AUTH_SOCK \\.\pipe\ssh-pageant
START /B "" "C:\SSH\wsl-ssh-pageant-amd64-gui.exe" --systray --winssh ssh-pageant
Run the .bat file
Use VS Code Remote Development
Open VS Code and connect to a remote host. You should no longer be prompted for a password.