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GIT-CREDENTIAL(1)		  Git Manual		     GIT-CREDENTIAL(1)



NAME
       git-credential - Retrieve and store user credentials

SYNOPSIS
       'git credential' (fill|approve|reject)


DESCRIPTION
       Git has an internal interface for storing and retrieving credentials
       from system-specific helpers, as well as prompting the user for
       usernames and passwords. The git-credential command exposes this
       interface to scripts which may want to retrieve, store, or prompt for
       credentials in the same manner as Git. The design of this scriptable
       interface models the internal C API; see credential.h for more
       background on the concepts.

       git-credential takes an "action" option on the command-line (one of
       fill, approve, or reject) and reads a credential description on stdin
       (see INPUT/OUTPUT FORMAT).

       If the action is fill, git-credential will attempt to add "username"
       and "password" attributes to the description by reading config files,
       by contacting any configured credential helpers, or by prompting the
       user. The username and password attributes of the credential
       description are then printed to stdout together with the attributes
       already provided.

       If the action is approve, git-credential will send the description to
       any configured credential helpers, which may store the credential for
       later use.

       If the action is reject, git-credential will send the description to
       any configured credential helpers, which may erase any stored
       credential matching the description.

       If the action is approve or reject, no output should be emitted.

TYPICAL USE OF GIT CREDENTIAL
       An application using git-credential will typically use git credential
       following these steps:

	1. Generate a credential description based on the context.

	   For example, if we want a password for https://example.com/foo.git,
	   we might generate the following credential description (don't
	   forget the blank line at the end; it tells git credential that the
	   application finished feeding all the information it has):

	       protocol=https
	       host=example.com
	       path=foo.git

	2. Ask git-credential to give us a username and password for this
	   description. This is done by running git credential fill, feeding
	   the description from step (1) to its standard input. The complete
	   credential description (including the credential per se, i.e. the
	   login and password) will be produced on standard output, like:

	       protocol=https
	       host=example.com
	       username=bob
	       password=secr3t

	   In most cases, this means the attributes given in the input will be
	   repeated in the output, but Git may also modify the credential
	   description, for example by removing the path attribute when the
	   protocol is HTTP(s) and credential.useHttpPath is false.

	   If the git credential knew about the password, this step may not
	   have involved the user actually typing this password (the user may
	   have typed a password to unlock the keychain instead, or no user
	   interaction was done if the keychain was already unlocked) before
	   it returned password=secr3t.

	3. Use the credential (e.g., access the URL with the username and
	   password from step (2)), and see if it's accepted.

	4. Report on the success or failure of the password. If the credential
	   allowed the operation to complete successfully, then it can be
	   marked with an "approve" action to tell git credential to reuse it
	   in its next invocation. If the credential was rejected during the
	   operation, use the "reject" action so that git credential will ask
	   for a new password in its next invocation. In either case, git
	   credential should be fed with the credential description obtained
	   from step (2) (which also contain the ones provided in step (1)).

INPUT/OUTPUT FORMAT
       git credential reads and/or writes (depending on the action used)
       credential information in its standard input/output. This information
       can correspond either to keys for which git credential will obtain the
       login information (e.g. host, protocol, path), or to the actual
       credential data to be obtained (username/password).

       The credential is split into a set of named attributes, with one
       attribute per line. Each attribute is specified by a key-value pair,
       separated by an = (equals) sign, followed by a newline.

       The key may contain any bytes except =, newline, or NUL. The value may
       contain any bytes except newline or NUL.

       In both cases, all bytes are treated as-is (i.e., there is no quoting,
       and one cannot transmit a value with newline or NUL in it). The list of
       attributes is terminated by a blank line or end-of-file.

       Git understands the following attributes:

       protocol
	   The protocol over which the credential will be used (e.g., https).

       host
	   The remote hostname for a network credential. This includes the
	   port number if one was specified (e.g., "example.com:8088").

       path
	   The path with which the credential will be used. E.g., for
	   accessing a remote https repository, this will be the repository's
	   path on the server.

       username
	   The credential's username, if we already have one (e.g., from a
	   URL, the configuration, the user, or from a previously run helper).

       password
	   The credential's password, if we are asking it to be stored.

       url
	   When this special attribute is read by git credential, the value is
	   parsed as a URL and treated as if its constituent parts were read
	   (e.g., url=https://example.com would behave as if protocol=https
	   and host=example.com had been provided). This can help callers
	   avoid parsing URLs themselves.

	   Note that specifying a protocol is mandatory and if the URL doesn't
	   specify a hostname (e.g., "cert:///path/to/file") the credential
	   will contain a hostname attribute whose value is an empty string.

	   Components which are missing from the URL (e.g., there is no
	   username in the example above) will be left unset.

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite



Git 2.38.4			  05/16/2024		     GIT-CREDENTIAL(1)