| git-credential(1) | |
| ================= | |
| NAME | |
| ---- | |
| git-credential - Retrieve and store user credentials | |
| SYNOPSIS | |
| -------- | |
| ------------------ | |
| 'git credential' (fill|approve|reject) | |
| ------------------ | |
| DESCRIPTION | |
| ----------- | |
| Git has an internal interface for storing and retrieving credentials | |
| from system-specific helpers, as well as prompting the user for | |
| usernames and passwords. The git-credential command exposes this | |
| interface to scripts which may want to retrieve, store, or prompt for | |
| credentials in the same manner as Git. The design of this scriptable | |
| interface models the internal C API; see credential.h for more | |
| background on the concepts. | |
| git-credential takes an "action" option on the command-line (one of | |
| `fill`, `approve`, or `reject`) and reads a credential description | |
| on stdin (see <<IOFMT,INPUT/OUTPUT FORMAT>>). | |
| If the action is `fill`, git-credential will attempt to add "username" | |
| and "password" attributes to the description by reading config files, | |
| by contacting any configured credential helpers, or by prompting the | |
| user. The username and password attributes of the credential | |
| description are then printed to stdout together with the attributes | |
| already provided. | |
| If the action is `approve`, git-credential will send the description | |
| to any configured credential helpers, which may store the credential | |
| for later use. | |
| If the action is `reject`, git-credential will send the description to | |
| any configured credential helpers, which may erase any stored | |
| credentials matching the description. | |
| If the action is `approve` or `reject`, no output should be emitted. | |
| TYPICAL USE OF GIT CREDENTIAL | |
| ----------------------------- | |
| An application using git-credential will typically use `git | |
| credential` following these steps: | |
| 1. Generate a credential description based on the context. | |
| + | |
| For example, if we want a password for | |
| `https://example.com/foo.git`, we might generate the following | |
| credential description (don't forget the blank line at the end; it | |
| tells `git credential` that the application finished feeding all the | |
| information it has): | |
| protocol=https | |
| host=example.com | |
| path=foo.git | |
| 2. Ask git-credential to give us a username and password for this | |
| description. This is done by running `git credential fill`, | |
| feeding the description from step (1) to its standard input. The complete | |
| credential description (including the credential per se, i.e. the | |
| login and password) will be produced on standard output, like: | |
| protocol=https | |
| host=example.com | |
| username=bob | |
| password=secr3t | |
| + | |
| In most cases, this means the attributes given in the input will be | |
| repeated in the output, but Git may also modify the credential | |
| description, for example by removing the `path` attribute when the | |
| protocol is HTTP(s) and `credential.useHttpPath` is false. | |
| + | |
| If the `git credential` knew about the password, this step may | |
| not have involved the user actually typing this password (the | |
| user may have typed a password to unlock the keychain instead, | |
| or no user interaction was done if the keychain was already | |
| unlocked) before it returned `password=secr3t`. | |
| 3. Use the credential (e.g., access the URL with the username and | |
| password from step (2)), and see if it's accepted. | |
| 4. Report on the success or failure of the password. If the | |
| credential allowed the operation to complete successfully, then | |
| it can be marked with an "approve" action to tell `git | |
| credential` to reuse it in its next invocation. If the credential | |
| was rejected during the operation, use the "reject" action so | |
| that `git credential` will ask for a new password in its next | |
| invocation. In either case, `git credential` should be fed with | |
| the credential description obtained from step (2) (which also | |
| contain the ones provided in step (1)). | |
| [[IOFMT]] | |
| INPUT/OUTPUT FORMAT | |
| ------------------- | |
| `git credential` reads and/or writes (depending on the action used) | |
| credential information in its standard input/output. This information | |
| can correspond either to keys for which `git credential` will obtain | |
| the login information (e.g. host, protocol, path), or to the actual | |
| credential data to be obtained (username/password). | |
| The credential is split into a set of named attributes, with one | |
| attribute per line. Each attribute is specified by a key-value pair, | |
| separated by an `=` (equals) sign, followed by a newline. | |
| The key may contain any bytes except `=`, newline, or NUL. The value may | |
| contain any bytes except newline or NUL. | |
| Attributes with keys that end with C-style array brackets `[]` can have | |
| multiple values. Each instance of a multi-valued attribute forms an | |
| ordered list of values - the order of the repeated attributes defines | |
| the order of the values. An empty multi-valued attribute (`key[]=\n`) | |
| acts to clear any previous entries and reset the list. | |
| In all cases, all bytes are treated as-is (i.e., there is no quoting, | |
| and one cannot transmit a value with newline or NUL in it). The list of | |
| attributes is terminated by a blank line or end-of-file. | |
| Git understands the following attributes: | |
| `protocol`:: | |
| The protocol over which the credential will be used (e.g., | |
| `https`). | |
| `host`:: | |
| The remote hostname for a network credential. This includes | |
| the port number if one was specified (e.g., "example.com:8088"). | |
| `path`:: | |
| The path with which the credential will be used. E.g., for | |
| accessing a remote https repository, this will be the | |
| repository's path on the server. | |
| `username`:: | |
| The credential's username, if we already have one (e.g., from a | |
| URL, the configuration, the user, or from a previously run helper). | |
| `password`:: | |
| The credential's password, if we are asking it to be stored. | |
| `password_expiry_utc`:: | |
| Generated passwords such as an OAuth access token may have an expiry date. | |
| When reading credentials from helpers, `git credential fill` ignores expired | |
| passwords. Represented as Unix time UTC, seconds since 1970. | |
| `oauth_refresh_token`:: | |
| An OAuth refresh token may accompany a password that is an OAuth access | |
| token. Helpers must treat this attribute as confidential like the password | |
| attribute. Git itself has no special behaviour for this attribute. | |
| `url`:: | |
| When this special attribute is read by `git credential`, the | |
| value is parsed as a URL and treated as if its constituent parts | |
| were read (e.g., `url=https://example.com` would behave as if | |
| `protocol=https` and `host=example.com` had been provided). This | |
| can help callers avoid parsing URLs themselves. | |
| + | |
| Note that specifying a protocol is mandatory and if the URL | |
| doesn't specify a hostname (e.g., "cert:///path/to/file") the | |
| credential will contain a hostname attribute whose value is an | |
| empty string. | |
| + | |
| Components which are missing from the URL (e.g., there is no | |
| username in the example above) will be left unset. | |
| `wwwauth[]`:: | |
| When an HTTP response is received by Git that includes one or more | |
| 'WWW-Authenticate' authentication headers, these will be passed by Git | |
| to credential helpers. | |
| + | |
| Each 'WWW-Authenticate' header value is passed as a multi-valued | |
| attribute 'wwwauth[]', where the order of the attributes is the same as | |
| they appear in the HTTP response. This attribute is 'one-way' from Git | |
| to pass additional information to credential helpers. | |
| Unrecognised attributes are silently discarded. | |
| GIT | |
| --- | |
| Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite |