Modifying a git repo so you can pull without a password (Shallow Thoughts)

Modifying a git repo so you can pull without a password

There's been a discussion in the GIMP community about setting up git repos to host contributed assets like scripts, plug-ins and brushes, to replace the long-stagnant GIMP Plug-in Repository. One of the suggestions involves having lots of tiny git repos rather than one that holds all the assets.

That got me to thinking about one annoyance I always have when setting up a new git repository on github: the repository is initially configured with an ssh URL, so I can push to it; but that means I can't pull from the repo without typing my ssh password (more accurately, the password to my ssh key).

Fortunately, there's a way to fix that: a git configuration can have one url for pulling source, and a different pushurl for pushing changes.

These are defined in the file .git/config inside each repository. So edit that file and take a look at the [remote "origin"] section.

For instance, in the GIMP source repositories, hosted on git.gnome.org, instead of the default of url = ssh://git.gnome.org/git/gimp I can set

pushurl = ssh://git.gnome.org/git/gimp
url = git://git.gnome.org/gimp

(disclaimer: I'm not sure this is still correct; my gnome git access stopped working -- I think it was during the Heartbleed security fire drill, or one of those -- and never got fixed.)

For GitHub the syntax is a little different. When I initially set up a repository, the url comes out something like url = git@github.com:username/reponame.git (sometimes the git@ part isn't included), and the password-free pull URL is something you can get from github's website. So you'll end up with something like this:

pushurl = git@github.com:username/reponame.git
url = https://github.com/username/reponame.git

Automating it

That's helpful, and I've made that change on all of my repos. But I just forked another repo on github, and as I went to edit .git/config I remembered what a pain this had been to do en masse on all my repos; and how it would be a much bigger pain to do it on a gazillion tiny GIMP asset repos if they end up going with that model and I ever want to help with the development. It's just the thing that should be scriptable.

However, the rules for what constitutes a valid git passwordless pull URL, and what constitutes a valid ssh writable URL, seem to encompass a lot of territory. So the quickie Python script I whipped up to modify .git/config doesn't claim to handle everything; it only handles the URLs I've encountered personally on Gnome and GitHub. Still, that should be useful if I ever have to add multiple repos at once. The script: repo-pullpush (yes, I know it's a terrible name) on GitHub.

Tags: programming, git, github, python
[ 12:28 Apr 05, 2016    More programming | permalink to this entry | ]