Setting up a Git server on Windows using Git for Windows and Win32_OpenSSH

You need to download and install:

• Win32_OpenSSH
• Git for Windows, selecting the "Run Git and included Unix tools from the Windows Command Prompt" when prompted. This option will install a bin folder in Program Files\git that will be placed into your path thus taking possibly taking precedence over other tools.

On Server

1. Set system environment variable for sshd to pick up the git commands

   $gitPath = Join-Path -Path $env:ProgramFiles -ChildPath "git\mingw64\bin"
   $machinePath = [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable('Path', 'MACHINE')
   [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('Path', "$gitPath;$machinePath", 'Machine')

2. Restart sshd so the changes to the Path environment variable can take effect.

3. Create Windows users for all Git users.

4. Create a central Git repository. Go to where you want to create a central repo, git clone --bare <source dir>. A directory with name <source dir>.git will be created. In it will be the .git contents of your source dir repo. for example:

   git clone --bare c:\git\newrepo.git

5. If you already have user private and public keys, copy the user public key to C:\Users\{user}\.ssh\ and rename it to authorized_keys

On Client

1. Set environment variable for git to use Win32_OpenSSH

   $env:GIT_SSH_COMMAND = '"C:\Program Files\OpenSSH\ssh.exe" -T'

2. (Optional) For key based authentication to work, generate user private and public key. The generated public key need to copy to C:\Users{user}.ssh\authorized_keys as indicated in step 5 on Server

   ssh-keygen.exe -t ed25519 -f c:\test\myprivatekey

3. (Optional) Register the user private key for single sign on

   ssh-add.exe c:\test\myprivatekey

4. To check out a repository, go to where you want to put your local repo,

**Note that git clone user@domain@servermachine:C:/test/myrepo.git does not work due to known issue. Work around it to set powershell as default Shell in registry. Or by following steps when cmd is default shell:

 cd c:\mygitrepros
 # initialize a local repo folder
 git init mylocalrepo
 cd mylocalrepo
 # add the remote repro
 git remote add origin user@domain@servermachine:C:/test/myrepo.git
 # work around the known issue by launching powershell to run the git commands
 git config --local remote.origin.uploadpack "powershell git-upload-pack"
 git config --local remote.origin.receivepack "powershell git-receive-pack"
 git fetch origin