Desktop SSH Client for Windows: vscode-ssh.
One of the things I have always wanted when working with Windows is a good SSH client/terminal. I’ve tried many over the years, but none really stuck. Putty was my go-to for quite a long time, and then I switched over to MobaXTerm for a while. But each of these had their issues. Putty was too light on features, MobaXTerm was way too heavy on resources, and both were quite limited in their terminal options (no tabs!).
So, about two weeks ago I decided to try something new: build my own SSH client as an extension for VS Code! This wouldn’t be my first VS Code extension (I’ve already created vscode-spotify), so it would be a good chance to try some new things out and learn something in the process.
VSCode SSH is a Desktop SSH client for Windows. I have been using it for quite some time now and I love it. It has all the features I need to get my job done. The code editor is built on top of atom and the terminal is based on putty, so you can use all the features of putty in this terminal window as well.
I don’t think they plan on making any changes to it in the near future, but that’s not the real reason why I wrote this post. VSCode SSH was released back in March of 2017 and since then there has been some major changes to how Microsoft handles open source projects, especially those that are cross platform.
The latest release of VSCode SSH was released on November 9th, 2018 which means that if you want to use this tool you will have to pay for it or find someone who knows how to build it from source code yourself.
It has been a while since I last blogged, but I am coming back with a bang! Today I am releasing a new open source project that can help you to write code in your favorite editor remotely on any machine.
I always wanted to have a easy way to do remote development and being able to use my favorite editor VSCode was the icing on the cake. You can download the extension from visual studio marketplace or from github.
This extension works by making use of SSHFS-Win. If you are familiar with SSHFS, then it will be easier for you to understand how this extension is working under the hood.
This extension doesn’t need admin privileges to run. You just need to make sure you have an ssh server running on your remote machine and have SSH key based authentication enabled between your local machine and remote server.
If you have used Putty to connect to remote systems via SSH, you probably have noticed that it doesn’t have a tabbed interface. It requires you to fire up multiple instances of Putty to open multiple sessions.
In this post, I will introduce a nice tabbed interface for Putty called PuTTY Connection Manager (or PUTTYCM). This tool is not official from the PuTTY team; it was developed by an external developer. PuTTY Connection Manager is an improved version of PuTTY Tab Manager (PTM) and combines the features of PTM and another similar utility called SuperPuTTY in one place. It can be used to manage all your remote connections in one place, whether they are SSH, Telnet or RDP connections.
[](https://travis-ci.org/billchurch/vscode-ssh)
One of the challenges of developing on a Windows computer is the lack of a SSH client. Since I use Git, I end up using PuTTY’s ssh client to connect to remote servers. After a while, it gets annoying and I figured it was time to automate things.
After some quick research, I found that there is an open-source SSH client named vscode-ssh which is available on GitHub [https://github.com/mshr-h/vscode-ssh]. This project seemed perfect for my needs – it’s based on OpenSSH and has a pretty user interface.
I’m not going to write about how to install vscode-ssh, because the installation process described in the README file is very straightforward. The main challenge was getting the configuration right and adding hosts.
To add your first host, go to File -> New Connection… and you will see this screen:
The Windows command line is very stable – no worrying about crashing, bugs or compatibility issues. It’s also a great alternative to GUI-based tools for system administrators that spend most of their time on the command line. The command line is an interesting and powerful way of interacting with your computer, but it’s also daunting for many users – especially those who are just getting started.
Here are 10 essential tips for getting started with the Windows command line. These tips will help you get (and stay) productive whether you’re a new or experienced user.
The Windows command line is very powerful, but it’s also very archaic compared to other operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X. The feature set and interface are relatively unchanged from 20 years ago when it was first released in Windows 95. While this makes the Windows command line less intimidating to beginners, it lacks many features that make the experience of using the command line more efficient.