Hello,
There appears to be a small inconsistency / bug in the documentation
located at https://git-scm.com/docs/gitcredentials.
Under the "Custom Helpers" subhead, there's a line that reads
Generally speaking, rule (3) above is the simplest for users to specify. Authors of credential helpers should make an effort to assist their users by naming their program "git-credential-$NAME", and putting it in the $PATH or $GIT_EXEC_PATH during installation, which will allow a user to enable it with git config credential.helper $NAME.
Earlier in the document, under "Configuration Options > helper", there
is a line that reads
The name of an external credential helper, and any associated options. If the helper name is not an absolute path, then the string git credential- is prepended
I think the latter text is correct. The maintainers of the google
cloud SDK followed the advice in the first part, naming their cred
helper `git-credential-gcloud.sh`, which is not accessible if you set
the custom credential helper to `gcloud.sh`. I had to make a symlink
at `credential-gcloud.sh`, following the instructions in the latter
block, to make it work. One could of course just specify the full path
in .gitconfig, but I figured it might be good to have these parts be
consistent anyways.
Best,
Chris
On Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 02:36:13PM -0700, Chris Chow wrote:
There appears to be a small inconsistency / bug in the documentation
located at https://git-scm.com/docs/gitcredentials.
I'm not sure I see what you mean.
Under the "Custom Helpers" subhead, there's a line that reads
quoted
Generally speaking, rule (3) above is the simplest for users to specify. Authors of credential helpers should make an effort to assist their users by naming their program "git-credential-$NAME", and putting it in the $PATH or $GIT_EXEC_PATH during installation, which will allow a user to enable it with git config credential.helper $NAME.
OK, so here you'd call your helper git-credential-gcloud.sh so that:
git config credential.helper gcloud.sh
would work.
Earlier in the document, under "Configuration Options > helper", there
is a line that reads
quoted
The name of an external credential helper, and any associated options. If the helper name is not an absolute path, then the string git credential- is prepended
And likewise here, we will run "git credential-gcloud.sh", which in turn
calls "git-credential-gcloud.sh" (since there is no builtin of that
name).
But we would never call "credential-gcloud.sh" in this way. You
could say:
git config credential.helper '!credential-gcloud.sh'
of course, but that is skipping the auto-name stuff entirely.
I think the latter text is correct. The maintainers of the google
cloud SDK followed the advice in the first part, naming their cred
helper `git-credential-gcloud.sh`, which is not accessible if you set
the custom credential helper to `gcloud.sh`. I had to make a symlink
at `credential-gcloud.sh`, following the instructions in the latter
block, to make it work. One could of course just specify the full path
in .gitconfig, but I figured it might be good to have these parts be
consistent anyways.
Both pieces of text are pointing to the name that the gcloud folks used.
I'm not sure why it didn't work, or how a symlink could possibly have
helped. Can you share the exact sequence of commands, with output, that
shows what you're seeing?
Here's a toy example that shows the kind of thing that should work:
# toy helper that lets us know when it's running
{ echo '#!/bin/sh' && echo 'echo >&2 running the foo helper'; } >foo.sh
chmod +x foo.sh
# add our current directory to PATH to experiment; usually these
# commands would go into /usr/local/bin, ~/bin, etc
export PATH=$PATH:$PWD
# make sure we're in a repo so we can stick our config somewhere. In
# the real world you'd probably be using "git config --global" or
# similar.
git init
git config credential.helper foo.sh
# this should say "credential-foo.sh is not a git command", because we
# tried to run "git credential-foo.sh", but that doesn't exist (the
# command itself is a noop; it just tries to remove a bogus credential
# that you don't actually have, but that's enough to trigger each
# helper).
echo url=https://user:pass@example.com | git credential reject
# now try it again with credential-foo.sh in the path. That also won't
# work, with the same outcome.
mv foo.sh credential-foo.sh
echo url=https://user:pass@example.com | git credential reject
# now try it with git-credential-foo.sh in the path. This should
# trigger the helper successfully.
mv credential-foo.sh git-credential-foo.sh
echo url=https://user:pass@example.com | git credential reject
What I'm suspecting is that the "credential-foo.sh is not a git command"
message may have confused you, and then while debugging it you did
something else (e.g., tweaking your PATH, setting the execute bit, etc)
that led the original git-credential-gcloud.sh to work.
-Peff