Today I Learned - more about Git config

Whilst trying to create a container image from a project on GitHub, I hit an issue with the cloning process of the GH repository ...

Specifically, the repo contains a submodule which, in my simple brain, is where one project/repo includes the content of another project/repo as an internal dependency.

I was cloning the original project using it's HTTPS URL rather than, say, via a SSH key pair.

Which is normally fine ...

However, I needed to provide a GitHub Personal Access Token for the clone, as the repo is private/protected.

This works perfectly: -

export ACCESS_TOKEN="THIS_IS_MY_ACCESS_TOKEN_NO_NOT_REALLY"
git clone --recurse-submodules 

https://${ACCESS_TOKEN}@github.com/organization/project-repo

Well, to a point .... the repo clone worked BUT the submodule failed to clone, because it, too, wanted a set of credentials ...

Thus I saw: -

Submodule 'submodule-dependency' (https://github.com/organization/submodule-dependency.git) registered for path 'submodule-dependency'
Cloning into '/tmp/project-repo/submodule-dependency'...
Username for 'https://github.com': ^Cwarning: Clone succeeded, but checkout failed.
...

which was a PITA.

There is, however, a solution AND a happy ending ...

I'd previously used the insteadOf property within my Git config: -

git config --global url."git@github.com:".insteadOf "https://github.com"

when I wanted to ensure that git clone used my SSH private key for authentication to private/protected repositories ...

There's an equivalent in the world of cloning submodules via HTTPS ...

git config --global url."https://x-access-token:${ACCESS_TOKEN}@github.com".insteadOf https://github.com

which solves the problem nicely.

One thing to note, however, this does mean that the value of the $ACCESS_TOKEN variable is then persisted to the global Git configuration, and can thus be seen via: -

git config --global --list

There is, however, a solution to this: -

git config --global --unset url."https://x-access-token:${ACCESS_TOKEN}@github.com".insteadOf https://github.com

git config --global --unset credential.helper

Easy when you know, NOW ?