Vim: how to transparently edit remote files on Windows, with ssh/Putty and netrw

Question

Ok guys, maybe this one has been asked before, but I searched and ran threw nothing, so i'm taking a chance here.

I'm using the latest vim (gvim 7.3), on Windows 7 64bits.

I've got some remote files that I want to edit directly with vim, using netrw.

Right now, I've got a fully working transparent ssh connexion to my remote hosts, thanks to Putty, Pageant and public/private keys.

I've successfully setup a read/write access to distant files with those fixes:

#### .vimrc ####
let g:netrw_cygwin= 0
let g:netrw_scp_cmd = 'c:\"Program Files (x86)"\PuTTY\pscp.exe -q -batch'
let g:netrw_sftp_cmd= '"c:\"Program Files (x86)"\PuTTY\psftp.exe'

Then I can access a file with :

:e scp:\\user@host:port\\home\me\some-file.txt

And, each time I access remote file, Vim run a windows prompt (cmd.exe) :

C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /c c:\"Program Files (x86)"\PuTTY\pscp.exe -q -batch
 -P 22 "C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Temp\VIF215E.tmp" "user@host:/home/me/some-file.txt"
Hit any key to close this window...

My problem is that hitting a key outside Vim each time I want to open/write a file isn't efficient at all.

So my question(s) is(are) :

• Am I doing it the right way ?
• Is there another way of transparently accessing a remote file with ssh on Windows ?
• If no, is there a way to get rid of "Hit any key to close this window..." when Vim launches putty's pscp.exe ?

Thanks a lot and happy vimming.

Answer 1

This seems a bit too elaborate.

I use SSHFS on Linux to accomplish this. It allows you to locally mount a remote path over SSH.

Something similar is available for Windows now as well: http://dokan-dev.net/en/. It should remove the need for all the modifications on the Vim side.