System-wide SSH configuration file for Eclipse IDE on Windows - linux

Question

We are using the Eclipse IDE on Windows virtual machines running on Xen. On the other hand, we are using Gitolite to manage the Git repositories. They are mirrored across several servers using Gitolite's mirroring feature.
What I intend to do is to transparently switch the users to the backup server in case the master server is down.
To do so, my idea is to create a system-wide host alias in the SSH settings. On Linux for instance, I would use the /etc/ssh/ssh_config file with an entry like:
Host scms.box
Hostname master-server
If ever master-server is down, I can then replace the hostname:
Host scms.box
Hostname backup-server
The Eclipse IDE is reading the SSH settings from ~/.ssh/config but this is user-specific (like on Linux).
I was wondering if there would be an equivalent to /etc/ssh/ssh_config on Windows?

Answer 1

I was wondering if there would be an equivalent to /etc/ssh/ssh_config on Windows?
As mentioned in "Git SSH client for Windows and path for .ssh/config file"
<installPath>\Git\etc\ssh\ssh_config
If you set GIT_SHH to <installPath>\Git\usr\bin\ssh.exe (and the launch Eclipse), then Eclipse should also use the global ssh config.

Answer 2

Short answer: it is not implemented in JGit. It only supports the "user" config file.
Long answer: I have been looking into the EGit/JGit source code. JGit is reading the SSH configuration and passing the object as argument to create the SSH session. However, JGit only supports the user config file.
Snippet of jgit/org.eclipse.jgit/src/org/eclipse/jgit/transport/OpenSshConfig.java:
public static OpenSshConfig get(FS fs) {
File home = fs.userHome();
if (home == null)
home = new File(".").getAbsoluteFile(); //$NON-NLS-1$
final File config = new File(new File(home, ".ssh"), Constants.CONFIG); //$NON-NLS-1$
final OpenSshConfig osc = new OpenSshConfig(home, config);
osc.refresh();
return osc;
}