Pony SSH

Pony SSH is a Visual Studio Code plugin which offers extremely fast file editing and remote filesystem watching via SSH.

Features

Pony SSH makes editing files over SSH fast and painless. It features:

• Blazingly fast remote SSH editing
• Automatic remote filesystem watching; changes to your remote filesystem are reflected locally automatically
• Encrypted local caching for extremely fast and secure file access

Requirements

Pony SSH requires an SSH server with Python >= 2.7 installed. Almost all Linux/Unix/OSX systems meet the requirements.

Setup

Simply add a new ponyssh.hosts section to your Settings.json file, describing each remote system you would like to connect to.

For example:

  "ponyssh.hosts": { 
    "my-host": {
       "host": "my-host.example.com",
       "username": "my-login",
       "password": true
    },
    "another-host": {
       "host": "another-host.example.com",
       "username": "my-login",
       "agent": true
    }
  }

Each host can be configured with the following options:

• host - (Required) Hostname or IP address to connect to.
• username - (Required) Username for authentication.
• port - Remote port to connect to. Default: 22
• path - Default path to open when connecting to this host. Default: ~ (home dir)
• password - Specify your password, or set to true (without quotes) to prompt you for your password each time you connect. Note: Storing passwords in plaintext in your Settings file is insecure.
• agent - Specify which SSH agent to use for connection, or enter true (without quotes) to use a sensible default. (see below)
• privateKey - Your private key for authentication.
• privateKeyFile - Specify a file containing your private key for authentication. eg: ~/.ssh/id_rsa.
• passphrase - Enter a passphrase for decrypting your private key. If left blank, Pony SSH will prompt you for a passphrase if needed. Set to true to force Pony SSH to always prompt for the passphrase. Note: Storing passphrases in plaintext in your Settings file is insecure.
• python - Specify the full path to your python installation on your remote host. Default: Your system default python installation
• shell - Specify a shell to use when executing remote commands. Include any command line arguments needed to pass your shell a command to execute. Each command to execute will get appended to your shell string. eg: sh -c or sudo sh -c. Default: sh -c

About SSH Agents

In most cases, you can set the agent field to true, and let Pony SSH pick a sensible default value for you. On Windows, Pony SSH will auto-select Pageant, and on Linux/Unix/OSX systems it will select $SSH_AUTH_SOCK.

You can manually configure Pony SSH to use Pageant on Windows by setting your agent to pageant. Alternately, you can specify the path to your SSH auth socket, or the environment variable in which your SSH auth socket can be found. eg: /foo/bar/my-socket, or $SSH_AUTH_SOCK.

Example setups

Authentication using an SSH agent, opening /var/www by default:

 "ponyssh.hosts": { 
    "example-agent-auth": {
       "host": "example.com",
       "username": "my-login",
       "agent": true,
       "path": "/var/www"
    }
  }

Ask for a password each time you connect:

 "ponyssh.hosts": { 
    "example-password-ask": {
       "host": "example.com",
       "username": "my-login",
       "password": true
    }
  }

Load a private key from a file:

 "ponyssh.hosts": { 
    "example-private-key": {
       "host": "example.com",
       "username": "my-login",
       "privateKeyFile": "~/.ssh/my_key"
    }
  }

Connect to a host and use sudo:

 "ponyssh.hosts": {
    "example-sudo": {
       "host": "example.com",
       "username": "my-login",
       "agent": true,
       "shell": "sudo sh -c"
    }
  }

(Note: This setup assumes your user is allowed to sudo without a password)

Usage

After adding a host to your settings.json file, Pony SSH is ready to use! To open a remote folder:

• Open the Command Palette (⌘ + shift + P on OSX, or Ctrl + shift + P on Windows)
• Run the command "Pony SSH: Open Remote Folder"
• Select the remote host you would like to use (based on your configured list in settings.json)
• Enter the remote path you would like to enter, or leave it blank to open the default folder.