You don't need any fancy GUI programs to run a global ssh-agent for your
entire login session on Mac OS X.  All you have to do is define the
environment variable SSH_AUTH_SOCK in ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist and then do
something like "ssh-agent -a ${SSH_AUTH_SOCK}".  (My environment.plist is
included here for reference; use it if you don't have one at all.)

The problem with "ssh-agent -a ${SSH_AUTH_SOCK}" is keeping track of the PID
for (a) making sure you only run one and (b) killing it when you're done
(logout?).

The two scripts in this directory, ssh_agent_start and ssh_agent_stop, keep
track of the PID so only one ssh-agent ever runs.  I run ssh_agent_start once
at login and then ssh-add once, and then I forget about it.

Yotam Gingold
yotam (strudel) yotamgingold.com