This is much more like ssh-agent than the Windows version is - it sets
SSH_AUTH_SOCK and SSH_AGENT_PID as its means of being found by other
processes, rather than Windows Pageant's approach of establishing
itself in a well-known location. But the actual agent code is the same
as Windows Pageant.
For the moment, this is an experimental utility and I don't expect it
to be useful to many people; its immediate use to me is that it
provides a way to test and debug the agent code on Unix, and also to
use the agent interface as a convenient way to exercise public key
functions I want to debug. And of course it means I can be constantly
using and testing my own code, on whatever platform I happen to be
using. In the further future, I have a list of possible features I
might add to it, but I don't know which ones I'll decide are
worthwhile.
One feature I've already put in is a wider range of lifetime
management options than ssh-agent: the -X mode causes Pageant to make
a connection to your X display, and automatically terminate when that
connection closes, so that it has the same lifetime as your X session
without having to do the cumbersome trick of exec()ing the subsequent
session-management process.
