gitway

gitway is a pure-Rust SSH toolkit for Git: transport, keys, signing, agent.

• Project page: SpacecraftSoftware.org/gitway
• Maintainer: Mohamed Hammad <Mohamed.Hammad@SpacecraftSoftware.org>
• Copyright: © 2026 Mohamed Hammad — GPL-3.0-or-later

It is designed as a drop-in replacement for ssh in Git workflows with a security-first default posture:

• Pinned host-key fingerprints for supported providers (no TOFU)
• Predictable SSH key discovery order
• SSH agent support with passphrase prompting fallback
• Structured JSON output for --test and --install in CI/agent mode

Install

cargo install gitway

Quick start

Register Gitway as Git's SSH command globally:

gitway --install

Run a connectivity check:

gitway --test

Use for one-off Git operations:

GIT_SSH_COMMAND=gitway git clone git@github.com:org/repo.git

Usage

gitway [OPTIONS] <host> <command...>

Common options:

• -i, --identity <FILE>: explicit private key path
• --cert <FILE>: OpenSSH certificate file
• -p, --port <PORT>: target SSH port (default 22)
• -v, --verbose: debug logging to stderr
• --insecure-skip-host-check: skip host-key verification (dangerous)
• --test: verify connectivity and authentication path
• --install: set core.sshCommand=gitway globally

Security notes

Gitway verifies server host keys against pinned SHA-256 fingerprints for supported providers and aborts on mismatch. This prevents trust-on-first-use acceptance of unknown keys.

Library crate

If you need to embed Gitway's SSH stack in Rust code, use the Anvil library — extracted from this repo and published as anvil-ssh:

[dependencies]
anvil-ssh = "0.1"

Source: https://github.com/Spacecraft-Software/Anvil. The legacy gitway-lib 0.9.x crate on crates.io is deprecated; migrate by changing the dep to anvil-ssh and replacing use gitway_lib::*; with use anvil_ssh::*; (types stay the same through Anvil 0.1.x).

Gitway repository and docs: https://github.com/Spacecraft-Software/Gitway