How to get SparkleShare working on Windows

Step 1: Download SparkleShare, install and then exit the program (without adding any project as we need to do some 'bypassing' now).

Note: If you've administrative privileges and can take the risk of working with Windows Registry System, uninstall and remove any traces of SparkeShare from the system registry (Run command: regedit) if it didn't work in the previous cases and do a 'fresh' re-installation. Also you don't need any Git GUI like msysGit, SparkleShare already comes with a build-in Git module and it serve our purpose pretty well here.

Step 2: Git works in the back-end of SparkleShare through a SSH tunnel and unfortunately, Windows does not come with a SSH client (unlike in Linux and Mac) Hence, we need a 3rd party client, which in our case is PuTTY, a popular free Open Source terminal emulator. Download the Installer Package from this link

Step 3: Open PuTTYgen, click on Conversions and import a key from this address: Username/AppData/Roaming/sparkleshare (Run command to locate the required directory: %Appdata%\sparkleshare), the file would be named something like "sparkleshare.your_email_id@gmail.com.key".

After loading the key, save the private key (will be required in next step) wherever you please. Once done, you may close this window.

Step 4: Now open Pageant and the add the private key (that you saved in the previous step)

Step 5: Add a path variable name for plink.exe to 'bypass' SSH handling through PuTTY (instead of ssh-agent in Program Files\SparkleShare\msysgit\bin directory)

Step 6: Configure your PuTTY.exe with a hostname: keg.hamsphire.edu and default port 22. You will get a terminal window to login, you may close this window after a while.

Step 7: Finally, you can add (i.e. cloning of repository) those project(s) from the remote server. Just type in the right address and remote path and Voila, it works!