sh script doesn't add ssh key to ssh-agent (windows git bash)

Question

I am using Github for Windows on Windows 7. I have a bash script to add the ssh-key to my ssh-agent. I have setup a ssh remote repo.

add_key.sh

#!/bin/bash    
cd ../ssh/
eval $(ssh-agent)
ssh-add id.rsa
cd ../htdocs/

Execute command-

./add_key.sh

It returns

Agent pid 5548
Identity added: id.rsa (id.rsa)

When I git push origin master, it fails. But when I manually cd in the ssh directory, and run the same ssh-related commands and cd back to my directory htdocs and git push to origin master, it works.

Why is this happening?

Answer 1

Your problem is that your script is running in its own shell session because you are running ./add_key.sh.

This means that the variables set by eval $(ssh-agent) are not living beyond that shell session so the parent session doesn't have them and cannot use the agent (also you might be spawning a new agent each time you run the script).

The fix for this is to run that "script" in the current session by dot-sourcing the script instead of running it as an external script.

That is you want to use . add_key.sh.