Support for OpenSSH instead of PuTTY

[psmith2100]

Why not use OpenSSH for windows instead of PuTTY for
FileZilla's SFTP functionality. OpenSSH uses standard
keys rather than a proprietary format that PuTTY
pageant uses. Using PuTTY is very cumbersome to setup
SFTP public/private key sessions. You have to import
the Unix generated key, convert it with puttygen, then
load it into pageant, and pageant has to be running in
the background. I would think that if Filezilla used
OpenSSH instead of PuTTy, that the process could be
more streamlined. Site manager could be setup such
that a standard public key could be associated with a
specific SFTP session. And SFTP functionality in
FileZilla could become completely independant of
another underlying app running in the background.
WSFTP Pro or Vandike's SecureFX allows the ability to
setup a key association with a specific SFTP session in
their version of "site manager." They also allow for a
global key to be delfined to be used with sites that
use the same private key.

Using OpenSSH would also probably solve the slow
transfer problem associated with PuTTY.

OpenSSH for Windows Project:

​http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=252007

[Tim Kosse]

When I first started SFTP support over 3 years ago, there
was no suitable SFTP implementation for Windows despite PuTTY.

For FileZilla 3 i did chose PuTTY for the following reasons:

• I already got experience with it's source
• source runs on all target platforms, whereas OpenSSH has

to be ported for each platform. Especially a Windows version
of OpenSSH is somewhat problematic.

Due to a different communication method, SFTP support in FZ3
should be faster than in FZ2. Also, enhancements to the key
management in FileZilla itself are planned.

If you don't like PuTTY's way to use it's own key format,
feel free to enhance it, it's free open source software.