Net::SSH2 - Secure Shell protocol interface
===========================================

Net::SSH2 is a perl interface to the libssh2 (http://www.libssh2.org)
library.  It supports the SSH2 protocol (there is no support for SSH1)
with all of the key exchanges, ciphers, and compression of libssh2.
At present, libssh2 requires OpenSSL (http://www.openssl.org) and can
optionally use zlib for compression (http://www.zlib.net).

The Net::SSH::Perl modules are showing signs of age; with the requirement
to be compatible with SSH versions 1 and 2, support of newer features such
as channels is difficult; it also has many dependencies, some of which
are hard to build (e.g. Math::Pari).  (Net::SSH is just a wrapper around the
ssh binaries, and never should have got the namespace.)  Net::SSH2 is a
new start, with few dependencies and all the functionality of the SSH
protocol, version 2, at your disposal.

INSTALLATION

To install this module type the following:

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test
   make install

DEPENDENCIES

This module requires these other modules and libraries:

  libSSH2 (http://www.libssh2.org; tested with 0.11 and 0.12)
  OpenSSL (http://www.openssl.org)
  zlib (optional; http://www.zlib.net)

BUGS/FEATURE REQUESTS

Please report bugs and request features on the CPAN bug tracking site,
rt.cpan.org.  If you are able and willing to provide a fix, attach a patch
and please provide your name to be credited in the changelog and an email
address for verification/discussion.

The ssh-sftp-perl-users mailing list
(http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ssh-sftp-perl-users), while set up
for Net::SSH::Perl (which I also maintain), is also an appropriate place to
post questions or comments about Net::SSH2; if volume gets too high, a separate
list will be created.

HACKING

The module is kept in a GitHub (http://github.com/rkitover/net-ssh2/)
repository, git://github.com/rkitover/net-ssh2.git

If you are interested in making a change/fix, please discuss it first.  If you
are unfamiliar with XS (perl C bindings), you should review the perlxs,
perlapi, and perlcall perldoc pages to learn more.  The secure shell protocol
is managed by the IETF secsh working group at
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/secsh-charter.html.  The source code of
libSSH2 will also be instructive.

TODO

More examples for the example/ directory would be nice.

Add get/put (file) methods to Net::SSH2::SFTP (as a shortcut, rather than 
requiring open/read/write/close).

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (C) 2005-2008 by David B. Robins; all rights reserved.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.0 or,
at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.

