Connecting to a host listed in ~/.ssh/config when using Fabric

Since version 1.4.0, Fabric uses your ssh config (partly). However, you need to explicitly enable it, with

env.use_ssh_config = True

somewhere near the top of your fabfile. Once you do this, Fabric should read your ssh config (from ~/.ssh/config by default, or from env.ssh_config_path).

One warning: if you use a version older than 1.5.4, an abort will occur if env.use_ssh_config is set but there is no config file present. In that case, you can use a workaround like:

if env.ssh_config_path and os.path.isfile(os.path.expanduser(env.ssh_config_path)):
    env.use_ssh_config = True

Note that this also happens when the name is not in /etc/hosts. I had the same problem and had to add the host name to both that file and ~/.ssh/config.

update: This Answer is now outdated.

Fabric doesn't have support currently for the .ssh/config file. You can set these up in a function to then call on the cli, eg: fab production task; where production sets the username, hostname, port, and ssh identity.

As for rsync project, that should now have port setting ability, if not, you can always run local("rsync ...") as that is essentially what that contributed function does.