Trouble running CVSProxy with SSH

Hello...

I tried CVS Proxy, but "out of the box" it will not work at all. NO
operation ever completes and CVSProxy blocks the VS.NET IDE because the
dialog never closes. My configuration needs SSH running on a nonstandard
port ( != 22), and I have a private key protected by a passphrase. This
works fine using Putty and Pageant as key server. TortoiseCVS runs fine on
the same machine (WinXP-Pro-SP1). So I am sure that things like CVSROOT are
set up correctly.

Observations:
- After I start a CVSProxy operation (Add Project to Source Control), I can
see ssh.exe running (in task manager). If I kill it, the CVS Proxy Dialog
("Select CVSROOT, module and local path") will come to life again and say
"[checkout aborted]: end of file from server".

- There is no ssh.exe in the CVSProxy distribution. So where does this
ssh.exe come from? With the help of FileMon (from sysinternals.com) I
found, that it is ssh.exe from the Cygwin distribution (yes, this is a
developer machine ;-). If I run this ssh.exe from a command line, it will
ask me for the passphrase for my key. Probably CVSProxy is not prepared for
this, and this is why it hangs.

Thoughts:
- Big Question: Why is CVSProxy running ssh.exe from Cygwin? OK, it is on
the PATH. But the "About" box in CVSProxy configuration says "SSH
connectivity provided by PuTTY". PuTTY will retrieve my key from Pageant,
which asks for the passphrase when I load the key into Pageant. So why
CVSProxy does not use Putty if it says so?

- TortoiseCVS runs fine, because it really uses PuTTY's session
configuration and key management.

- To Make WinCVS use my private key for SSH, I configured WinCVS to use the
Plink program from TortoiseCVS distribution. This also runs fine.

- I tried the same trick for CVSProxy by configuring CVSProxy to use
cvs.exe from TortoiseCVS. But for CVSProxy it is the same behaviour whether
I use the built-in cvs.exe or "use specified" cvs.exe from TortoiseCVS:
ssh.exe runs and never terminates. I cannot see what it is doing. Also,
there is no way to configure ssh.exe for CVSProxy.

Now the big trick:
==================

Take TortoisePlink.exe, copy it to a directory which is on the PATH and
name it SSH.EXE. Now CVSProxy works!

Hmmm, this is really not "ease of use". You might want to fix this...


By the way: Why does CVSProxy need a separate GUI Client? Except for the
missing IDE integration, I am happy with TortoiseCVS and installed WinCVS
only because CVSProxy wants it. But I do not understand why it wants it...

Best regards,
Adrian