13 stable releases

new 1.13.0	Apr 11, 2026
1.12.0	Mar 30, 2026
0.1.0	Mar 2, 2026

#148 in Command line utilities

MIT license

435KB
9K SLoC

yconn

SSH connection manager CLI — manage named SSH connections across teams and projects with a layered, git-friendly config system.

Connections live in YAML files at three layers (project, user, system). Higher layers override lower ones on name collision. When a Docker image is configured, yconn re-invokes itself inside the container so SSH keys can be pre-baked into an image rather than distributed to individual machines.

Documentation

Configuration reference — layer system, all config fields, Docker block, session file, credential policy
Examples — copy-paste-ready scenarios: project-layer only, project + user layers, Docker-enabled setup, multi-group setup

Installation

Arch Linux

One-step (pacman fetches and installs directly from the release URL):

VERSION=1.2.0
sudo pacman -U "https://github.com/yanctab/yconn/releases/download/v${VERSION}/yconn-${VERSION}-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst"

Debian / Ubuntu

VERSION=1.2.0
wget "https://github.com/yanctab/yconn/releases/download/v${VERSION}/yconn_${VERSION}_amd64.deb"
sudo apt install "./yconn_${VERSION}_amd64.deb"

From source

git clone https://github.com/yanctab/yconn.git
cd yconn
make install    # builds a .deb or .pkg.tar.zst and installs it (Debian/Ubuntu or Arch)

make install auto-detects the distro, builds the native package via make package, and installs it with the system package manager (apt-get or pacman). Only the package-manager invocation uses sudo — you do not need to run sudo make install.

To build packages without installing, run make package instead.

Cargo

cargo install yconn

Quick start

# Scaffold a project config in the current directory
yconn connections init

# Add a connection interactively
yconn connections add

# List all connections
yconn list

# Connect
yconn connect prod-web

# Switch to a named group
yconn groups use work

Commands

Command	Description
`yconn list`	List all connections across all layers
`yconn connect <name>`	Connect to a named host
`yconn connections show <name>`	Show resolved config for a connection (no secrets printed)
`yconn connections show --dump`	Print the fully merged connections and users maps as YAML
`yconn connections add`	Interactive wizard to add a connection to a chosen layer
`yconn connections edit <name>`	Open the connection's source config file in `$EDITOR`
`yconn connections remove <name>`	Remove a connection (prompts for layer if ambiguous)
`yconn connections init`	Scaffold a `<group>.yaml` in `.yconn/` in the current directory
`yconn install`	Copy project connections into the user (or system) layer
`yconn config`	Show active config files, their paths, and Docker status
`yconn groups list`	Show all groups found across all layers
`yconn groups use <name>`	Set the active group
`yconn groups clear`	Revert to the default group (`connections`)
`yconn groups current`	Print the active group name and resolved config file paths
`yconn ssh-config install`	Write Host blocks to `~/.ssh/yconn-connections` and update `~/.ssh/config`
`yconn ssh-config print`	Print the fully merged SSH config to stdout without writing any files
`yconn ssh-config uninstall`	Remove `~/.ssh/yconn-connections` and the `Include` line from `~/.ssh/config`
`yconn ssh-config disable`	Remove the `Include` line from `~/.ssh/config`, keeping `~/.ssh/yconn-connections` intact
`yconn ssh-config enable`	Add the `Include` line back to `~/.ssh/config` if currently absent
`yconn users show`	List all user key/value entries across all layers
`yconn users add`	Interactive wizard to add a user entry to a chosen layer; use `--user KEY:VALUE` (repeatable) to skip the wizard
`yconn users edit <key>`	Open the source config file for a user entry in `$EDITOR`

Global flags: --all, --verbose

Per-subcommand flags: --layer system|user|project (for connections add, connections edit, connections remove, users add, users edit)

Development

# First-time setup (installs Rust components and cargo-llvm-cov)
make setup
# System packages also required:
sudo apt-get install -y musl-tools pandoc zstd

make build    # compile (musl static binary)
make test     # run tests
make lint     # cargo fmt --check + clippy
make docs     # generate docs/man/yconn.1 via pandoc
make release  # tag and trigger release pipeline

See man yconn for the full command reference after make docs.

Dependencies

~2.6–5.5MB
~102K SLoC