NAME

       gitcredentials - providing usernames and passwords to Git

SYNOPSIS

       git config credential.https://example.com.username myusername
       git config credential.helper "$helper $options"

DESCRIPTION

       Git will sometimes need credentials from the user in order to perform operations; for example, it may
       need to ask for a username and password in order to access a remote repository over HTTP. This manual
       describes the mechanisms Git uses to request these credentials, as well as some features to avoid
       inputting these credentials repeatedly.

REQUESTING CREDENTIALS

       Without any credential helpers defined, Git will try the following strategies to ask the user for
       usernames and passwords:

        1. If the GIT_ASKPASS environment variable is set, the program specified by the variable is invoked. A
           suitable prompt is provided to the program on the command line, and the user’s input is read from its
           standard output.

        2. Otherwise, if the core.askPass configuration variable is set, its value is used as above.

        3. Otherwise, if the SSH_ASKPASS environment variable is set, its value is used as above.

        4. Otherwise, the user is prompted on the terminal.

AVOIDING REPETITION

       It can be cumbersome to input the same credentials over and over. Git provides two methods to reduce this
       annoyance:

        1. Static configuration of usernames for a given authentication context.

        2. Credential helpers to cache or store passwords, or to interact with a system password wallet or
           keychain.

       The first is simple and appropriate if you do not have secure storage available for a password. It is
       generally configured by adding this to your config:

           [credential "https://example.com"]
                   username = me

       Credential helpers, on the other hand, are external programs from which Git can request both usernames
       and passwords; they typically interface with secure storage provided by the OS or other programs.

       To use a helper, you must first select one to use. Git currently includes the following helpers:

       cache
           Cache credentials in memory for a short period of time. See git-credential-cache(1) for details.

       store
           Store credentials indefinitely on disk. See git-credential-store(1) for details.

       You may also have third-party helpers installed; search for credential-* in the output of git help -a,
       and consult the documentation of individual helpers. Once you have selected a helper, you can tell Git to
       use it by putting its name into the credential.helper variable.

        1. Find a helper.

               $ git help -a | grep credential-
               credential-foo

        2. Read its description.

               $ git help credential-foo

        3. Tell Git to use it.

               $ git config --global credential.helper foo

CREDENTIAL CONTEXTS

       Git considers each credential to have a context defined by a URL. This context is used to look up
       context-specific configuration, and is passed to any helpers, which may use it as an index into secure
       storage.

       For instance, imagine we are accessing https://example.com/foo.git. When Git looks into a config file to
       see if a section matches this context, it will consider the two a match if the context is a more-specific
       subset of the pattern in the config file. For example, if you have this in your config file:

           [credential "https://example.com"]
                   username = foo

       then we will match: both protocols are the same, both hosts are the same, and the "pattern" URL does not
       care about the path component at all. However, this context would not match:

           [credential "https://kernel.org"]
                   username = foo

       because the hostnames differ. Nor would it match foo.example.com; Git compares hostnames exactly, without
       considering whether two hosts are part of the same domain. Likewise, a config entry for
       http://example.com would not match: Git compares the protocols exactly.

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS

       Options for a credential context can be configured either in credential.* (which applies to all
       credentials), or credential.<url>.*, where <url> matches the context as described above.

       The following options are available in either location:

       helper
           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. The resulting string is executed by the
           shell (so, for example, setting this to foo --option=bar will execute git credential-foo --option=bar
           via the shell. See the manual of specific helpers for examples of their use.

           If there are multiple instances of the credential.helper configuration variable, each helper will be
           tried in turn, and may provide a username, password, or nothing. Once Git has acquired both a
           username and a password, no more helpers will be tried.

           If credential.helper is configured to the empty string, this resets the helper list to empty (so you
           may override a helper set by a lower-priority config file by configuring the empty-string helper,
           followed by whatever set of helpers you would like).

       username
           A default username, if one is not provided in the URL.

       useHttpPath
           By default, Git does not consider the "path" component of an http URL to be worth matching via
           external helpers. This means that a credential stored for https://example.com/foo.git will also be
           used for https://example.com/bar.git. If you do want to distinguish these cases, set this option to
           true.

CUSTOM HELPERS

       You can write your own custom helpers to interface with any system in which you keep credentials. See the
       documentation for Git’s credentials API[1] for details.

GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES

        1. credentials API
           file:///usr/share/doc/git/html/technical/api-credentials.html