Why does Flare refuse RSA keys from ssh-keygen and PuTTYgen?

[kevinmcl]

G'day all.

I've been using Flare 2023r2 and earlier with Git repository, on Windows 10 with no non-intermittent problems. The operations in the Source Control section of the menu worked fine.

The corporate laptop was recently reimaged ( Win 10 again ), and Flare 2024 installed, and an ordinary RSA 2048-bit keypair generated with ssh-keygen, my attempts to "Import project from source" failed at the "Browse for the Flare project file step, when Flare complained that my keys were not base64 encoded. I tried several times with ssh-keygen, PuTTYgen, etc. always with the same result.

SO... I cloned the repo via GitLab, and had no problem accessing it with command-line git in Git Bash.

Now, when I attempt "Import project from source" and "Browse for the Flare project file", Flare opens the little Progress window with the yellow background... but only for about 3 seconds, before it vanishes, and nothing more happens. There's no further action, even when I let it sit for an hour and a half).
ALSO, in Flare I see the remote Repo as having 7 branches, while Git Bash sees only 6. GitLab says that the 7th one is "stale" (which is true). Does Flare incorporate its own wonky git? Or what?

Does anybody know what kind of keys or certs Flare wants in version 2024, to connect to a remote git repo?
Or how to convert the standard 2048-bit or 4096-bit RSA keys from ssh-keygen (in Windows Command Prompt) or from PuTTYgen, such that Flare will be happy?

I found old questions that don't quite apply, but nothing that looks pertinent.

[AlexFox]

Do you have Git for Windows installed? There seems to be a variety of problems with Flare's own Git implementation. If you go to File > Options > Source Control Flare will tell you if you have a Git for Windows installation it can use or give you a link to install it. You can pretty much keep all the default install options but you should select Use the native Windows Secure Channel library under Choosing HTTPS transport backend.

[kevinmcl]

Thanks!

I'll give that a whirl.