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r-lib / gitcreds

Query git credentials from R
https://gitcreds.r-lib.org/
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Provide device-authentication workflow for GitHub? #61

Open cboettig opened 2 weeks ago

cboettig commented 2 weeks ago

Apologies if this is already supported here or elsewhere! Please let me know! I think it would be great if gitcreds could provide the device authentication workflow for GitHub, such as we see in the Python package https://github.com/jupyterhub/gh-scoped-creds (and also built into MS's Code Server I believe), in which a user requests a short-lived (8hr) scoped credential authenticated with a OTP.

This provides a much simpler workflow for users creating tokens than learning to do so manually in the GitHub web interface. It also promotes the use of short-lived tokens, consistent with the best-practices we see in other systems, especially with the rise of hosted or cloud-based compute platforms.

you know I'm no security expert, but it seems that current practices in our R community are still built around more long-lived and widely scoped tokens, while elsewhere everything is migrating towards more short-lived and narrowly scoped ones. (I recognize that this request is more GitHub specific than being generally about git, just wasn't sure where best to raise it).

gaborcsardi commented 2 weeks ago

Seems like gh-scoped-creds sets up a global git credential helper for github.com, so if you already use that, there is nothing more to do in R, gitcreds will automatically pick up and use those credentials.

cboettig commented 2 weeks ago

yes, that true in settings where students are working in python already anyway.

but when I'm just teaching in R it would be nice to have a solution that doesn't require messing around with setting up a python environment first, right? It's just an API call and writing to a file