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Git Credential Manager Core: Building a universal hallmark experience

Hallmark is a critical component to your daily development. When working in open source, you need to prove that you lot have rights to update a branch with git push. Additionally…

Authentication is a disquisitional component to your daily development. When working in open source, you need to show that you have rights to update a co-operative with git push. Additionally when working on proprietary software, you need a way to bear witness that yous fifty-fifty accept read permission to access your code during git fetch or git pull.

Git currently supports ii authentication mechanisms for accessing remotes. When using HTTP(South), Git sends a username and password, or a personal access token (PAT) via HTTP headers. When using SSH, Git relies on the server knowing your machine's public SSH key. Though SSH-based authentication is considered most secure, setting information technology upwards correctly tin can frequently be a challenge. On the other hand, PATs are frequently much easier to prepare up, but also far less secure.

To manage all of this, Git relies on tools called credential managers which handle authentication to different hosting services. When showtime designed, these tools simply stored usernames and passwords in a secure location for later retrieval (due east.g., your keychain, in an encrypted file, etc). These days, 2-factor authentication (2FA) is commonly required to keep your information secure. This complicates the authentication story significantly since new and existing tools are required to meet the demands of these stricter authentication models.

Fifty-fifty though hallmark is so disquisitional, building a new authentication characteristic is hard. Difficult to debug, hard to test, hard to get correct. If you're going to do something, and then it is best to practice information technology right. Even improve, it is helpful to exercise it in one case. Nosotros've been hard at work laying the foundation for a single tool to unify the Git authentication feel across platforms and hosting services.

I'm pleased to announce a new credential manager is available for Windows and macOS: Git Credential Manager (GCM) Core! GCM Core is a gratis, open up-source, cross-platform credential manager for Git, and currently supports hallmark to GitHub, Bitbucket, and Azure Repos. We built this tool from the footing upward with cross-platform and cantankerous-host support in listen. We programme to extend this tool to include support for Linux platforms and hallmark with additional hosting services.

But wait? Doesn't this just mean nosotros've made still another credential helper?

xkcd on Standards. Source: xkcd.com – License

Well yes, but actually no. GCM Cadre is in beta today, which means that we won't exist retiring GCM for Windows. Also without Linux support nosotros won't be retiring GCM for Mac & Linux, but notwithstanding.

However, once GCM Core has had some fourth dimension in the wild, we will move to deprecate and retire both GCM for Windows and GCM for Mac & Linux.

Try out GCM Core today

To install GCM Core, follow these instructions for each platform:

Windows

GCM Cadre is distributed as a standalone installer which you tin can find from the releases page on GitHub. The next version of the official Git for Windows installer will include GCM Core as an experimental pick, and somewhen will become installed by default.

GCM Core installs side-by-side with existing Git Credential Manager for Windows installations and will re-use whatever previously stored credentials. This means that you do non need to re-authenticate! Credentials created by GCM Cadre are also backwards compatible with GCM for Windows, should you wish to return to the older credential manager.

Switching back to GCM for Windows

If you installed GCM Core via the Git for Windows installer, you lot tin can run the following in an admin command-prompt to switch back to using GCM for Windows:

          git config --system --unset credential.https://dev.azure.com.useHttpPath  git config --organisation credential.helper managing director        

If you installed GCM Core via the standalone installer, just uninstall GCM Core from the Control Panel or Settings app.

macOS

GCM Core is available from the custom Microsoft Homebrew Tap and tin can be installed and configured for the current user easily by running the following commands with Homebrew installed:

          brew tap microsoft/git  mash cask install git-credential-manager-cadre        

Toward a universal authentication feel

We intend for GCM Core to be helpful for all users, on all platforms, using any hosting service. At that place is room to abound here, peculiarly our plans to make GCM Core available on Linux.

We are pleased our first release has support for authenticating with GitHub, Azure Repos, and Bitbucket. In particular, we would like to thank @mminns for helping us get the Bitbucket authentication mechanism working! We are excited to similarly extend back up for other hosting services, including planned support for GitLab.

Using GCM Core

While authentication is critical to user success, it isn't something that should accept a lot of user attention. Nosotros streamlined the hallmark menstruum to ensure that you lot are prompted for new credentials only when admittedly necessary. This flow includes interactive sessions that permit a diversity of 2FA mechanisms.

On Windows, our authentication model uses a graphical user interface (GUI) system. The hallmark windows are custom to your Git hosting service, equally seen in the figure below.

On macOS, the authentication process uses a combination of final inputs and browser windows.

We are working on updating this concluding-based approach with a cross-platform GUI approach. This again will help unify the hallmark user experience across platforms.

Subsequently completing the GUI steps to create a security token, these credentials are deeply stored. On Windows, the tokens are stored in the Windows Credential Director. This is backwards uniform with any existing GCM for Windows credentials. On macOS, credentials are deeply stored in the user'south login Keychain.

A brief history of GCM

I mentioned before that we are laying a foundation for a unified authentication experience. It may aid to sympathize the fractured world of Git authentication before GCM Core.

The Git Credential Managing director for Windows (GCM for Windows) was created dorsum in 2015 primarily to address the combined trouble of a lack of SSH support in Azure Repos, then named Visual Studio Online, and a hard requirement for 2FA for many Azure Agile Directory or Microsoft Business relationship users – the hallmark providers supported by Azure Repos. Over time GCM for Windows also gained support for GitHub and Bitbucket authentication through open-source contributions. Git for Windows initially shipped simply with a C-based credential helper named wincred which just persisted a username/countersign, and did nothing regarding 2FA.

At the same time, Git Credential Manager for Mac and Linux (GCM for Mac & Linux) was created, focused on non-traditional Microsoft developers. That is, those not on Windows and those using non-Microsoft languages, runtimes, or toolchains.

These ii codebases are completely separate, with GCM for Windows existence written in C# and GCM for Mac & Linux being written in Java. GCM for Mac & Linux is also express to Azure Repos and never got any support for GitHub or Bitbucket. Both projects have had their off-white share of issues (recollect: auth is hard). With the number of different authentication topologies typically present in enterprises means there'southward been a number of muddied hacks added over the years to work around issues quickly.

Later seeing the success of moving the Windows Bone monorepo to Git, the Microsoft Office team approached our team with a desire to exercise the same with their monorepo. The catch: they have developers using macOS to build macOS and iOS clients. This means that they need cross-platform tools. As part of that, you can read about our journey to transition from the Windows-only VFS for Git to Scalar as a cantankerous-platform solution for monorepo operation.

Scalar and VFS for Git are extensions to Git that make it easier to piece of work with very large monorepos. Both of these technologies rely in function of the GVFS Protocol to receive information such every bit file sizes and individual objects on-need from a remote repository. This mechanism only uses HTTP REST endpoints, and is non bachelor via SSH. This means that it is even more of import to accept a proper credential manager on macOS.

We examined this landscape of credential managers and decided that they needed something better, and more sustainable. Thus, the idea of GCM Cadre was born.

With the release and introduction of .NET Cadre and .Net Standard, creating applications that work across Windows, macOS, and Linux is easy. The ability to package the .NET runtime with your application when publishing ways yous tin distribute without worrying nigh runtime dependencies or mismatched versions.

Futurity work

Today is just the beginning. This first launch is a small-scale, just important pace toward unifying the authentication experience. Come up along with usa on this journey, and contribute to the open-source projection by creating issues when you have a problem, or contributing a pull request if you tin.

Linux distributions

We are working on getting GCM Core to Linux users of various distributions. The background is already in place, and nosotros're only evaluating options for persisting credentials in a safe place. Consult this outcome for the latest updates on Linux support.

Mac/Linux GUIs

Currently only Windows has GUIs for all the current Git host providers. macOS has a GUI only for Azure Repos. Nosotros are evaluating options such as Avalonia or native helper apps for this, and would happily welcome any contributions in this space. Consult this issue for the latest updates on cantankerous-platform UI.

oliverdebefors.blogspot.com

Source: https://github.blog/2020-07-02-git-credential-manager-core-building-a-universal-authentication-experience/