Re: [ANNOUNCE] Git 1.7.8.rc0

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Wed, Nov 02, 2011 at 02:03:27PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:

> Without using a configured remote, try this (with .netrc configured):
> 
>   git push https://github.com/user/repo.git :refs/heads/nothing
> 
> which should work, and then this:
> 
>   git push https://user@github.com/user/repo.git :refs/heads/nothing
> 
> which will do the "must hit enter to accept password" thing.
> 
> That fails even with v1.7.7. I didn't bisect, but it has been there
> quite a while (v1.6.6 has it, but v1.6.5 has a weird error, so I didn't
> bisect further).

OK, I see the issue.

The logic is "if we have a username, but not a password, then ask for
the password before trying any http" (this is what avoids the extra
round trip).

But if you are using netrc, we don't parse it ourselves. We just tell
curl "when you are making the request, check netrc, too".

So the ideal logic is:

  1. look in netrc

  2. If we have a username and no password, ask for password

  3. Otherwise, try it and see if we get a 401.

But we can't do that, because (1) and (3) happen atomically inside of
curl.

The simplest thing is to just drop the behavior in (2), and let it drop
to a 401. The extra round trip probably isn't that big a deal.

The other option is to start parsing netrc ourselves, or do the extra
round trip if we detect ~/.netrc or something. But that last one is
getting pretty hackish.

-Peff