How to set up username and passwords for different git repos

gitpassword

─[$] cat ~/.gitconfig

[user]
    name = Shirish Agarwal
    email = xxxx@xxxx.xxx
[core]
    editor = leafpad
    excludesfiles = /home/shirish/.gitignore
    gitproxy = \"ssh\" for gitorious.org
[merge]
    tool = meld
[push]
    default = simple
[color]
    ui = true
    status = auto
    branch = auto

Now I want to put my git credentials for github, gitlab and gitorious so each time I do not have to lookup the credentials on the browser. How can this be done so it's automated ?

I am running zsh

Best Answer

Using SSH

The common approach for handling git authentication is to delegate it to SSH. Typically you set your SSH public key in the remote repository (e.g. on GitHub), and then you use that whenever you need to authenticate. You can use a key agent of course, either handled by your desktop environment or manually with ssh-agent and ssh-add.

To avoid having to specify the username, you can configure that in SSH too, in ~/.ssh/config; for example I have

Host git.opendaylight.org
  User skitt

and then I can clone using

git clone ssh://git.opendaylight.org:29418/aaa

(note the absence of a username there).

Using `gitcredentials`

If the SSH approach doesn't apply (e.g. you're using a repository accessed over HTTPS), git does have its own way of handling credentials, using gitcredentials (and typically git-credential-store). You specify your username using

git config credential.${remote}.username yourusername

and the credential helper using

git config credential.helper store

(specify --global if you want to use this setup everywhere).

Then the first time you access a repository, git will ask for your password, and it will be stored (by default in ~/.git-credentials). Subsequent accesses to the repository will use the stored password instead of asking you.

Related Solutions

Shell – Get git branch from several folders/repos

Try this. $1 should be the parent dir containing all of your repositories (or use "." for the current dir):

#!/bin/bash

function git_branches()
{
    if [[ -z "$1" ]]; then
        echo "Usage: $FUNCNAME <dir>" >&2
        return 1
    fi

    if [[ ! -d "$1" ]]; then
        echo "Invalid dir specified: '${1}'"
        return 1
    fi

    # Subshell so we don't end up in a different dir than where we started.
    (
        cd "$1"
        for sub in *; do
            [[ -d "${sub}/.git" ]] || continue
            echo "$sub [$(cd "$sub"; git  branch | grep '^\*' | cut -d' ' -f2)]"
        done
    )
}

You can make this its own script (but replace $FUNCNAME with $0), or keep it inside a function and use it in your scripts.

I have nested git repos, will it cause a problem

My first tests with nested git repositories didn't suffer any of those three problems. You don't have to add .git in gitignore; the contents of all .git directories are ignored automatically.

The other files (e.g. in the same directory as .git) can be committed in the outer repository.

So I thought etckeeper could keep tracking all files, while sub-directories could have their history recorded more carefully in specific repositories. The two histories wouldn't know anything about each other.

I only noticed a problem later. When I committed a directory which is a git repository and contains commits itself, and I hadn't already committed files from that directory in the outer repository, then it appears as a Subproject. The contents are represented only by a commit ID. gitk seems to show it as a Submodule instead.

This sounds like git really wants to recognize them as git-submodule. I don't particularly understand git-submodule, I just know it has a reputation for being a bit confusing.

I also noticed the .etckeeper file bloats up with files from the .git directories, even if git is using submodules.