This is something that's super simple on Linux but every couple of years I have to setup a new Windows machine with GIT and Putty (pageant to be exact). Every time I do it I seem to forget one of the steps and spend a few hours trying to remember what I've missed. So here is the note to myself so I can remember how to do it.
Components to install:
Putty including of course puttygen and pageant
Git Bash
1) Generate a ssh key
I won’t go into details here as there are a million tutorials already on the internet but you want to use Puttygen to create a new private/public security key pair. You can save this as a .ppk file on your local machine.
2) Upload the public key to GitLab / Github
Copy the public key from inside Puttygen to GitLab or GitHub. You'll need to find the page on your account where you can add an SSH key and paste it in there. Be sure this is the public key and not the private one.
3) Run pageant
Run pageant and it should appear in your system tray. Now open it and add the .ppk to your keys.
4) Add a GIT_SSH environment variable
Using this for advice:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/43313491
Create an environment variable that points to plink. This is probably the step I forget the most.
5) Configure GIT
You now need to ensure you have the correct url added to your git repo. A few times I've used the http one or the wrong url or something. Carefully copy the SSH (git@gitlab.com...) url from Gitlab or Github and add this to your git project as a remote repo url. You can check you've done this correctly by typing git remote -v
That's it. You should definitely restart Git bash and restarting your PC wouldn't hurt either, just make sure you start up pageant again. Another thing I forget is how to get this to run on startup. Oh it's a complicated life!
