Since I started using git (and github), i’ve struggled with the fact there wasn’t a single client that could matchexisting svn or hg clients.

I tried TortoiseGit – hoping that it would be up to par with TortoiseSVN, but that was not the case (I thingk that would have been somewhere around version 1.2.??).
So, I ended up using mysysgit like most of the other windows users, looking at the number of posts about that particular topic.

Then, recently I thought it might be interesting to see how TortoiseGit has improved. And I was impressed. Pretty much everything (at least the stuff I use) seems to be working. However, there still was the issue with using ssh. I didn’t really have the patience to get to the bottom right away, so ended up using TortoiseGit locally and mysysgit (bash) to push and pull.

Today I did some more research and while there is lots of stuff about how to download putty et al, there isn’t really a lot about TortoiseGit. Then, there is also the issue that the default is plink instead of openssl, which means different keystore structure etc.

Eventually, I figured I  should perhaps look at the help – and lo and behold – there it was. All I needed was:

1. To use puttygen.exe (comes with TortoiseGit) to convert my openssl private key to a .ppk file
2. Configure the remote with the newly created .ppk file

And now there isn’t a single reason to use anything else! After using TortoiseSVN for so long I feels instantly at home. Beside the push and pull I can use it pretty much the same like SVN. It’s perhaps not that simple, but it makes migrating from SVN to git a lot less painful.