diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt
index d1e2120e15..0d9d369ca7 100644
--- a/Documentation/config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/config.txt
@@ -1408,6 +1408,10 @@ remote.<name>.tagopt::
 	Setting this value to \--no-tags disables automatic tag following when
 	fetching from remote <name>
 
+remote.<name>.vcs::
+	Setting this to a value <vcs> will cause git to interact with
+	the remote with the git-remote-<vcs> helper.
+
 remotes.<group>::
 	The list of remotes which are fetched by "git remote update
 	<group>".  See linkgit:git-remote[1].
diff --git a/remote.c b/remote.c
index 15c9cec60b..09bb79c22c 100644
--- a/remote.c
+++ b/remote.c
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ static char buffer[BUF_SIZE];
 
 static int valid_remote(const struct remote *remote)
 {
-	return !!remote->url;
+	return (!!remote->url) || (!!remote->foreign_vcs);
 }
 
 static const char *alias_url(const char *url, struct rewrites *r)
@@ -444,6 +444,8 @@ static int handle_config(const char *key, const char *value, void *cb)
 	} else if (!strcmp(subkey, ".proxy")) {
 		return git_config_string((const char **)&remote->http_proxy,
 					 key, value);
+	} else if (!strcmp(subkey, ".vcs")) {
+		return git_config_string(&remote->foreign_vcs, key, value);
 	}
 	return 0;
 }
diff --git a/remote.h b/remote.h
index 5db842087d..ac0ce2ff9c 100644
--- a/remote.h
+++ b/remote.h
@@ -11,6 +11,8 @@ struct remote {
 	const char *name;
 	int origin;
 
+	const char *foreign_vcs;
+
 	const char **url;
 	int url_nr;
 	int url_alloc;
diff --git a/transport.c b/transport.c
index 5ae8db6335..13bab4e2a1 100644
--- a/transport.c
+++ b/transport.c
@@ -818,6 +818,11 @@ struct transport *transport_get(struct remote *remote, const char *url)
 		url = remote->url[0];
 	ret->url = url;
 
+	if (remote && remote->foreign_vcs) {
+		transport_helper_init(ret, remote->foreign_vcs);
+		return ret;
+	}
+
 	if (!prefixcmp(url, "rsync:")) {
 		ret->get_refs_list = get_refs_via_rsync;
 		ret->fetch = fetch_objs_via_rsync;