The functionality for credential storage helpers is already
there; we just need to give the users a way to turn it on.
This patch provides a "credential.helper" configuration
variable which allows the user to provide one or more helper
strings.
Rather than simply matching credential.helper, we will also
compare URLs in subsection headings to the current context.
This means you can apply configuration to a subset of
credentials. For example:
[credential "https://example.com"]
helper = foo
would match a request for "https://example.com/foo.git", but
not one for "https://kernel.org/foo.git".
This is overkill for the "helper" variable, since users are
unlikely to want different helpers for different sites (and
since helpers run arbitrary code, they could do the matching
themselves anyway).
However, future patches will add new config variables where
this extra feature will be more useful.
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
All of the components of a credential struct can be found in
a URL. For example, the URL:
http://foo:bar@example.com/repo.git
contains:
protocol=http
host=example.com
path=repo.git
username=foo
password=bar
We want to be able to turn URLs into broken-down credential
structs so that we know two things:
1. Which parts of the username/password we still need
2. What the context of the request is (for prompting or
as a key for storing credentials).
This code is based on http_auth_init in http.c, but needed a
few modifications in order to get all of the components that
the credential object is interested in.
Once the http code is switched over to the credential API,
then http_auth_init can just go away.
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
There are a few places in git that need to get a username
and password credential from the user; the most notable one
is HTTP authentication for smart-http pushing.
Right now the only choices for providing credentials are to
put them plaintext into your ~/.netrc, or to have git prompt
you (either on the terminal or via an askpass program). The
former is not very secure, and the latter is not very
convenient.
Unfortunately, there is no "always best" solution for
password management. The details will depend on the tradeoff
you want between security and convenience, as well as how
git can integrate with other security systems (e.g., many
operating systems provide a keychain or password wallet for
single sign-on).
This patch provides an abstract notion of credentials as a
data item, and provides three basic operations:
- fill (i.e., acquire from external storage or from the
user)
- approve (mark a credential as "working" for further
storage)
- reject (mark a credential as "not working", so it can
be removed from storage)
These operations can be backed by external helper processes
that interact with system- or user-specific secure storage.
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Jeff King