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authorM Hickford <mirth.hickford@gmail.com>2023-02-18 06:32:57 +0000
committerJunio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>2023-02-22 15:18:58 -0800
commitd208bfdfef97a1e8fb746763b5057e0ad91e283b (patch)
tree045bc1b816c80266e1fe7be0146aafb88a716824 /Documentation/gitcredentials.txt
parent23c56f7bd5f1667f8b793d796bf30e39545920f6 (diff)
downloadgit-d208bfdfef97a1e8fb746763b5057e0ad91e283b.tar.gz
credential: new attribute password_expiry_utc
Some passwords have an expiry date known at generation. This may be years away for a personal access token or hours for an OAuth access token. When multiple credential helpers are configured, `credential fill` tries each helper in turn until it has a username and password, returning early. If Git authentication succeeds, `credential approve` stores the successful credential in all helpers. If authentication fails, `credential reject` erases matching credentials in all helpers. Helpers implement corresponding operations: get, store, erase. The credential protocol has no expiry attribute, so helpers cannot store expiry information. Even if a helper returned an improvised expiry attribute, git credential discards unrecognised attributes between operations and between helpers. This is a particular issue when a storage helper and a credential-generating helper are configured together: [credential] helper = storage # eg. cache or osxkeychain helper = generate # eg. oauth `credential approve` stores the generated credential in both helpers without expiry information. Later `credential fill` may return an expired credential from storage. There is no workaround, no matter how clever the second helper. The user sees authentication fail (a retry will succeed). Introduce a password expiry attribute. In `credential fill`, ignore expired passwords and continue to query subsequent helpers. In the example above, `credential fill` ignores the expired password and a fresh credential is generated. If authentication succeeds, `credential approve` replaces the expired password in storage. If authentication fails, the expired credential is erased by `credential reject`. It is unnecessary but harmless for storage helpers to self prune expired credentials. Add support for the new attribute to credential-cache. Eventually, I hope to see support in other popular storage helpers. Example usage in a credential-generating helper https://github.com/hickford/git-credential-oauth/pull/16 Signed-off-by: M Hickford <mirth.hickford@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: Calvin Wan <calvinwan@google.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/gitcredentials.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/gitcredentials.txt2
1 files changed, 1 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/gitcredentials.txt b/Documentation/gitcredentials.txt
index 4522471c33..100f045bb1 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitcredentials.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitcredentials.txt
@@ -167,7 +167,7 @@ helper::
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.
+non-expired 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