1GIT-CREDENTIAL(1) Git Manual GIT-CREDENTIAL(1)
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6 git-credential - Retrieve and store user credentials
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9 git credential <fill|approve|reject>
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12 Git has an internal interface for storing and retrieving credentials
13 from system-specific helpers, as well as prompting the user for
14 usernames and passwords. The git-credential command exposes this
15 interface to scripts which may want to retrieve, store, or prompt for
16 credentials in the same manner as Git. The design of this scriptable
17 interface models the internal C API; see credential.h for more
18 background on the concepts.
19 git-credential takes an "action" option on the command-line (one of
21 fill, approve, or reject) and reads a credential description on stdin
22 (see INPUT/OUTPUT FORMAT).
23 If the action is fill, git-credential will attempt to add "username"
25 and "password" attributes to the description by reading config files,
26 by contacting any configured credential helpers, or by prompting the
27 user. The username and password attributes of the credential
28 description are then printed to stdout together with the attributes
29 already provided.
30 If the action is approve, git-credential will send the description to
32 any configured credential helpers, which may store the credential for
33 later use.
34 If the action is reject, git-credential will send the description to
36 any configured credential helpers, which may erase any stored
37 credential matching the description.
38 If the action is approve or reject, no output should be emitted.
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42 An application using git-credential will typically use git credential
43 following these steps:
44 1. Generate a credential description based on the context.
46 For example, if we want a password for https://example.com/foo.git,
48 we might generate the following credential description (don’t
49 forget the blank line at the end; it tells git credential that the
50 application finished feeding all the information it has):
51 protocol=https
53 host=example.com
54 path=foo.git
55 2. Ask git-credential to give us a username and password for this
57 description. This is done by running git credential fill, feeding
58 the description from step (1) to its standard input. The complete
59 credential description (including the credential per se, i.e. the
60 login and password) will be produced on standard output, like:
61 protocol=https
63 host=example.com
64 username=bob
65 password=secr3t
66 In most cases, this means the attributes given in the input will be
68 repeated in the output, but Git may also modify the credential
69 description, for example by removing the path attribute when the
70 protocol is HTTP(s) and credential.useHttpPath is false.
71 If the git credential knew about the password, this step may not
73 have involved the user actually typing this password (the user may
74 have typed a password to unlock the keychain instead, or no user
75 interaction was done if the keychain was already unlocked) before
76 it returned password=secr3t.
77 3. Use the credential (e.g., access the URL with the username and
79 password from step (2)), and see if it’s accepted.
80 4. Report on the success or failure of the password. If the credential
82 allowed the operation to complete successfully, then it can be
83 marked with an "approve" action to tell git credential to reuse it
84 in its next invocation. If the credential was rejected during the
85 operation, use the "reject" action so that git credential will ask
86 for a new password in its next invocation. In either case, git
87 credential should be fed with the credential description obtained
88 from step (2) (which also contain the ones provided in step (1)).
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91 git credential reads and/or writes (depending on the action used)
92 credential information in its standard input/output. This information
93 can correspond either to keys for which git credential will obtain the
94 login information (e.g. host, protocol, path), or to the actual
95 credential data to be obtained (username/password).
96 The credential is split into a set of named attributes, with one
98 attribute per line. Each attribute is specified by a key-value pair,
99 separated by an = (equals) sign, followed by a newline.
100 The key may contain any bytes except =, newline, or NUL. The value may
102 contain any bytes except newline or NUL.
103 In both cases, all bytes are treated as-is (i.e., there is no quoting,
105 and one cannot transmit a value with newline or NUL in it). The list of
106 attributes is terminated by a blank line or end-of-file.
107 Git understands the following attributes:
109 protocol
111 The protocol over which the credential will be used (e.g., https).
112 host
114 The remote hostname for a network credential. This includes the
115 port number if one was specified (e.g., "example.com:8088").
116 path
118 The path with which the credential will be used. E.g., for
119 accessing a remote https repository, this will be the repository’s
120 path on the server.
121 username
123 The credential’s username, if we already have one (e.g., from a
124 URL, the configuration, the user, or from a previously run helper).
125 password
127 The credential’s password, if we are asking it to be stored.
128 url
130 When this special attribute is read by git credential, the value is
131 parsed as a URL and treated as if its constituent parts were read
132 (e.g., url=https://example.com would behave as if protocol=https
133 and host=example.com had been provided). This can help callers
134 avoid parsing URLs themselves.
135 Note that specifying a protocol is mandatory and if the URL doesn’t
137 specify a hostname (e.g., "cert:///path/to/file") the credential
138 will contain a hostname attribute whose value is an empty string.
139 Components which are missing from the URL (e.g., there is no
141 username in the example above) will be left unset.
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144 Part of the git(1) suite
145Git 2.33.1 2021-10-12 GIT-CREDENTIAL(1)