From: M Hickford <mirth.hickford@xxxxxxxxx> Describe problems storing personal access tokens in git-credential-cache and suggest alternatives. Research suggests that many users are confused about this: > the point of passwords is that (ideally) you memorise them [so] > they're never stored anywhere in plain text. Yet GitHub's personal > access token system seems to basically force you to store the token in > plain text? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46645843/where-to-store-my-git-personal-access-token#comment89963004_46645843 Signed-off-by: M Hickford <mirth.hickford@xxxxxxxxx> --- docs: discuss caching personal access tokens Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-1851%2Fhickford%2Fcache-pat-docs-v1 Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-1851/hickford/cache-pat-docs-v1 Pull-Request: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/1851 Documentation/git-credential-cache.txt | 17 +++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/git-credential-cache.txt b/Documentation/git-credential-cache.txt index 487cc557a87..18e9933674a 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-credential-cache.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-credential-cache.txt @@ -78,6 +78,23 @@ variable (this example increases the cache time to 1 hour): $ git config credential.helper 'cache --timeout=3600' ------------------------------------------------------- +PERSONAL ACCESS TOKENS +---------------------- + +Some remotes accept personal access tokens, which are randomly +generated and hard to memorise. They typically have a lifetime of weeks +or months. + +git-credential-cache is inherently unsuitable for persistent storage of +personal access tokens. The credential will be forgotten after the cache +timeout. Even if you configure a long timeout, credentials will be +forgotten if the daemon dies. + +To avoid frequently regenerating personal access tokens, configure a +credential helper with persistent storage. Alternatively, configure an +OAuth credential helper to generate credentials automatically. See +linkgit:gitcredentials[7]. + GIT --- Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite base-commit: 14650065b76b28d3cfa9453356ac5669b19e706e -- gitgitgadget
