Git - Credential
About
Git makes use of a credential helper (an external utility) to be able to retrieve the credentials)
The id of a credential (user, ww) is a URL (Credential context)
It will lookup a credential with the user, protocol, host. By order of precedence, Git will search the following credential URL to find a credential
- first, git:http://user@hostname:port
- if not found then, git:http://hostname:port
Management
How to set your credentials
In a remote URL
In a remote url. It works only for ssh or https as the password should be encrypted in transport.
- on push
git push https://username:[email protected]/username/repository.git
- on fetch
git fetch https://username:[email protected]/username/repository.git
- on clone
git clone https://username:[email protected]/username/repository.git
git clone https://username:[email protected]/username/repository.git
Be careful with an old git client before this commit, the credentials appear in all output.
If a user copy-pastes the output to document an error, the token will have a lot of chances to leak. Example:
error: failed to push some refs to 'https://user:[email protected]/org/repo'
hint: Updates were rejected because the tip of your current branch is behind
hint: its remote counterpart. Merge the remote changes (e.g. 'git pull')
In the credential manager
Example:
- with the cache credential manager where we set the username for an url
git config --global credential.helper cache
git config credential.https://hostname.username myusername
Helper / Credential Manager
Get
Which credential helper use git now ?
git config --global credential.helper
manager
# or whole path
/usr/local/bin/git-credential-manager
List
- Credential are listed by URL. Example:
echo url=https://github.com/gerardnico/eraldy.com.git | git credential fill
protocol=https
host=github.com
path=gerardnico/eraldy.com.git
username=
password=gerardnico
- Store
git help -a | grep credential-
credential-manager merge-recursive submodule--helper
credential-store merge-resolve subtree
credential-wincred merge-subtree svn
Help
First, list them, then you can ask the help for one of them with the below command.
Example for credential-store
git help credential-store
Set
git config --global credential.helper foo
#where foo is your credential helper
git config --global credential.helper /path/to/foo
Example:
- for Git Credential Windows Manager
git config --global credential.helper manager
- for Git Credential Store (File System)
git config --global credential.helper store