Mercurial over ssh with config file

Question

Say I have the following ssh .config file:

Host host_nickname
    User xxx
    HostName yyy.zz.vvv
    ControlMaster auto
    ControlPath ~/.ssh/%r@%h:%p

In case you are not familiar with ControlMaster or ControlPath, here is the description from the ssh_config manual:

ControlMaster:
         Enables the sharing of multiple sessions over a single network
         connection.  When set to ``yes'', ssh(1) will listen for connec-
         tions on a control socket specified using the ControlPath argu-
         ment.  Additional sessions can connect to this socket using the
         same ControlPath with ControlMaster set to ``no'' (the default).
         These sessions will try to reuse the master instance's network
         connection rather than initiating new ones, but will fall back to
         connecting normally if the control socket does not exist, or is
         not listening.

In Mercurial, if you want to push or pull from a repository, you could just type the following:

hg push ssh://[email protected]/hg/

Now, my question:

I would like to ask Mercurial to push (or pull) against a repository at /path/to/repository on the server corresponding to my ssh config entry host_nickname. How do I do this?

rcollyer rcollyer · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-05T21:00:23

If you look under hg help urls you'll find

ssh://[user@]host[:port]/[path][#revision]

So, assuming that /path/to/repository works from your login dir on the remote machine, then type

hg [push|pull] ssh://host_nickname/path/to/repository

This works because hg isn't doing the name resolution; ssh is, and you've specified the correspondence between host_nickname and the real HostName. Also, ControlMaster won't affect this, as that just allows multiplexing over a single ssh connection. Note, if hg isn't in your remote PATH, then you need to specify it via --remotecmd /path/to/hg.

Mercurial over ssh with config file

Now, my question:

1 Answers