This manual page is for users of packages that depend on gitcreds
for managing tokens or passwords to GitHub or other git repositories.
If you are a package author and want to import gitcreds for this
functionality, see vignette("package", package = "gitcreds").
Otherwise please start at 'Basics' below.
gitcreds_get(url = "https://github.com", use_cache = TRUE, set_cache = TRUE)gitcreds_set(url = "https://github.com")
gitcreds_delete(url = "https://github.com")
gitcreds_list_helpers()
gitcreds_get() returns a gitcreds object, a named list
of strings, the fields returned by the git credential handler.
Typically the fields are protocol, host, username, password.
Some credential helpers support path-dependent credentials and also
return a path field.
gitcreds_set() returns nothing.
gitcreds_delete() returns FALSE if it did not find find any
credentials to delete, and thus it did not call git credential reject.
Otherwise it returns TRUE.
gitcreds_get() errors if git is not installed, no credential helpers
are configured or no credentials are found. gitcreds_set() errors if
git is not installed, or setting the new credentials fails.
gitcreds_delete() errors if git is not installed or the git calls fail.
See vignette("package", package = "gitcreds") if you want to handle
these errors.
gitcreds_list_helpers() returns a character vector,
corresponding to the credential.helper git configuration key.
Usually it contains a single credential helper, but it is possible to
configure multiple helpers.
URL to get, set or delete credentials for. It may contain a user name, which is typically (but not always) used by the credential helpers. It may also contain a path, which is typically (but not always) ignored by the credential helpers.
Whether to try to use the environment variable cache
before turning to git to look up the credentials for url.
See gitcreds_cache_envvar().
Whether to set the environment variable cache after
receiving the credentials from git. See gitcreds_cache_envvar().
gitcreds_get() queries git credentials. It is typically used by package
code that needs to authenticate to GitHub or another git repository.
The end user might call gitcreds_get() directly to check that the
credentials are properly set up.
gitcreds_set() adds or updates git credentials in the credential store.
It is typically called by the user, and it only works in interactive
sessions. It always asks for acknowledgement before it overwrites
existing credentials.
gitcreds_delete() deletes git credentials from the credential store.
It is typically called by the user, and it only works in interactive
sessions. It always asks for acknowledgement.
gitcreds_list_helpers() lists the active credential helpers.
These functions use the git credential system command to query and set
git credentials. They need an external git installation. You can
download git from https://git-scm.com/downloads. A recent version is
best, but at least git 2.9 is suggested.
gitcreds should work out of the box on macOS with git versions 2.9.2
or later, and on Windows with git versions 2.12.1 or later, using the
default git settings. On Windows, for git versions from 2.9.2 up until
2.12.1 you probably need to set the default credential helper to
wincred. It is usually simpler to update git to a recent version.
To see your current git version run git --version from your shell.
Or from R:
system("git --version")
If you need to avoid installing git, see 'Environment variables' below.
To set up password-less authentication to GitHub:
Create a personal access token (PAT). See https://docs.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/creating-a-personal-access-token.
Call gitcreds_set() and give this token as the password.
Run gitcreds_get(use_cache = FALSE) to check that the new
PAT is set up. To see the token, you can run
gitcreds_get(use_cache = FALSE)$password.
GITHUB_PAT environment variable
If you already have a GitHub token, and use the GITHUB_PAT or
GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable in your .Renviron file or
elsewhere, no changes are neccessary. gitcreds will automatically use
this variable.
However, we still suggest that you add your token to the git credential
store with gitcreds_set() and remove GITHUB_PAT from your
.Renviron file. The credential store is more secure than storing
tokens in files, and command line git also uses the credential store
for password-less authentication.
Because querying the git credential store might not be very fast,
gitcreds_get() caches credentials in environment variables by default.
Credentials for different URLs are stored in different environment
variables. The name of the environment variable is calculated with
gitcreds_cache_envvar().
To remove the cache, remove this environment variable with
Sys.unsetenv().
If you want to avoid installing git, or using the credential store for
some reason, you can supply credentials in environment variables, e.g.
via the .Renviron file. Use gitcreds_cache_envvar() to query the
environment variable you need to set for a URL:
You can set this environment variable to the token or password itself.
If you also need a user name, then use the user:password form, i.e.
separate them with a colon. (If your user name or passwrd has :
characters, then you need to escape them with a preceding backslash.)
git should pick up the proxy configuration from the http_proxy,
https_proxy, and all_proxy environment variables. To override
these, you can set the http.proxy git configuration key.
More info here: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config#Documentation/git-config.txt-httpproxy
and here: https://github.com/microsoft/Git-Credential-Manager-Core/blob/master/docs/netconfig.md
git credential helpers are an extensible, configurable mechanism to store credentials. Different git installations have different credentials helpers. On Windows the default helper stores credentials in the system credential store. On macOS, it stores them in the macOS Keychain. Other helpers cache credentials in a server process or in a file on the file system.
gitcreds only works if a credential helper is configured. For the current git version (2.29.0), this is the case by default on Windows and macOS (for git from HomeBrew), but most Linux distributions do not set up a default credential helper.
You can use gitcreds_list_helpers() to see the active credential
helper(s) for a repository. Make sure you set the working directory
to the git tree before calling gitcreds_list_helpers().
git allows repository specific configuration, via the .git/config file.
The config file might specify a different credential helper, a
different user name, etc. This means that gitcreds_get() etc. will
potentially work differently depending on the current working
directory. This is especially relevant for package code that changes
the working directory temporarily.
Non-GitHub URLs work mostly the same way as GitHub URLs.
gitcreds_get() and gitcreds_set() default to GitHub, so you'll need
to explicitly set their url argument.
Some credential helpers, e.g. Git Credential Manager for Windows
(manager) and Git Credential Manager Core (manager-core) work
slightly differently for GitHub and non-GitHub URLs, see their
documentation for details.
The various credential helpers support having multiple accounts on the same server in different ways. Here are our recommendations.
Use the (currently default) osxkeychain credential helper.
In Keychain Access, remove all your current credentials for the host(s) you are targeting. E.g. for GitHub, search for github.com Internet Passwords.
Then add the credential that you want to use for "generic access". This is the credential that will be used for URLs without user names. The user name for this credential does not matter, but you can choose something descriptive, e.g. "token", or "generic".
Configure git to use this username by default. E.g. if you chose "generic", then run
git config --global credential.username generic
Add all the other credentials, with appropriate user names. These are the user names that you need to put in the URLs for the repositories or operations you want to use them for. (GitHub does not actually use the user names if the password is a PAT, but they are used to look up the correct token in the credential store.)
We suggest that you update to the latest git version, but at
least 2.29.0, and use the manager-core helper which is now default.
If you installed manager-core separately from git, we suggest that
you remove it, because it might cause confusion as to which helper is
actually used.
Remove all current credentials first, for the host you are targeting.
You can do this in 'Credential Manager' or gitcreds::gitcreds_list()
to find them and 'Credential Manager' or the oskeyring package to
remove them. You can also use the oskeyring package to back up the
tokens and passwords.
Then add the credential that you want to use for "generic access". This is the credential that will be used for URLs without user names. The user name for this credential does not matter, but you can choose something descriptive, e.g. "PersonalAccessToken", "token", or "generic".
Configure git to use this username by default. E.g. if you chose "generic", then run
git config --global credential.username generic
Add all the other credentials, with appropriate user names. These are the user names that you need to put in the URLs for the repositories or operations you want to use them for. (GitHub does not actually use the user names if the password is a PAT, but they are used to look up the correct token from the credential store.)
If you only need to manage a single github.com credential, together with
possibly multiple credentials to other hosts (including GitHub
Enterprise hosts), then you can use the default manager helper, and
get away with the default auto-detected GCM authority setting.
In this case, you can add your github.com credential with an arbitrary
user name, and for each other host you can configure a default user
name, and/or include user names in the URLs to these hosts. This is how
to set a default user name for a host called https://example.com:
git config --global credential.https://example.com.username myusername
If you need to manage multiple github.com credentials, then you can
still use the manager helper, but you need to change the GCM authority
by setting an option or an environment variable, see
https://github.com/microsoft/Git-Credential-Manager-for-Windows/blob/master/Docs/Configuration.md#authority.
This is how to change GCM authority in the config:
git config --global credential.authority Basic
You can also change it only for github.com:
git config --global credential.github.com.authority Basic
Then you can configure a default user name, this will be used for URLs without a user name:
git config --global credential.username generic
Now you can add you credentials, the default one with the "generic" user name, and all the others with their specific user and host names.
Alternatively, you can install a newer version of Git Credential Manager
Core (GCM Core), at least version 2.0.252-beta, and use the
manager-core helper. You'll potentially need to delete the older
manager-core helper that came with git itself. With the newer version
of GCM Core, you can use the same method as for newer git versions, see
above.
It is possible to configure multiple credential helpers. If multiple
helpers are configured for a repository, then gitcreds_get() will
go over them until a credential is found. gitcreds_set() will try to
set the new credentials in every configured credential helper.
You can use gitcreds_list_helpers() to list all configured helpers.
if (FALSE) {
gitcreds_get()
gitcreds_get("https://github.com")
gitcreds_get("https://myuser@github.com/myorg/myrepo")
}
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