Configuring SSH Agent Plugin for Jenkins on Windows

I've been using Git for Windows for a long time now, and I struggled with fundamentally the same issue. When working with github or other remote ssh repos, I wanted to be able to open multiple windows but have them all share the same ssh agent.

Below is the full content of what I call my assure_ssh_agent shell function for Git Bash. Source its definition in every independent session that you run. I have the following two lines in my ~/.profile.

. ~/ssh-agent.shassure_ssh_agent

After the function has been defined you can ssh-add your keyfiles or, if you define a list of them in .ssh/keylist, you can just run addkeys, which will load all of them into the agent for 10 hours by default, which should be enough for a normal working day and long lunchbreak.

How it works: The script maintains shared state in the file .ssh/pid_store.If assure_ssh_agent() cannot find a valid pid it will start a new agent, and write its pid and socket there, for any subsequent session.

Contents of ssh-agent.sh:

# echo $SSH_AUTH_SOCK $SSH_AGENT_PIDis_running() {  (kill -0 ${1:?PID}) 2> /dev/null}agent_pid_store() {  (  pid_store=$HOME/.ssh/agent_pid  touch -a $pid_store  case $1 in  ( read ) read pid sock < $pid_store && echo $pid $sock      [ -n "$sock" ]  ;;  ( write) echo \            ${SSH_AGENT_PID:?} \            ${SSH_AUTH_SOCK:?} > $pid_store  ;;  ( clear ) rm -f ${pid_store:?}  esac  )}find_active_ssh_agent() {  (  set -- $(agent_pid_store read)  pid=$1 sock=$2  case $1 in  ("") return 1  ;;  ($SSH_AGENT_PID)     is_running $SSH_AGENT_PID && echo $SSH_AGENT_PID $2  ;;  (*)     is_running $pid && echo $pid $sock && return     return 1  ;;  esac  )}ssh_agent_is_running() {  (find_active_ssh_agent | read _was_there_something_to_read_)}assure_ssh_agent() {  unset GIT_SSH  unset SVN_SSH  set -- $(    find_active_ssh_agent  ) && pid=$1 sock=$2  :  "pid='$pid' sock='$sock'"  :  "length: pid:${#pid} sock:${#sock}"  case $pid$sock in  ( "" )    printf  "* " >& 2     eval $( ssh-agent ) > /dev/null    agent_pid_store write    echo "ssh agent ${SSH_AGENT_PID}" >& 2     return  ;;  ( * )    export SSH_AGENT_PID=$pid SSH_AUTH_SOCK=$sock    echo "ssh agent ${SSH_AGENT_PID}" >& 2     set +x    return  ;;  esac}addkeys(){  (set -e #-x  unset GIT_SSH  unset SVN_SSH  Keyfile_Timeout=36000  cd ~/.ssh   exec < keylist ||     exit 1 $(echo >& 2 "Add names of keyfiles to $HOME/.ssh/keylist")  while read keyfile  do    ssh-add -t ${Keyfile_Timeout} ~/.ssh/$keyfile  done  )}