Re: [PATCH] Prompt for a username when an HTTP request 401s

[Scott Chacon <schacon@gmail.com>]

Hey,

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Also, earlier I said "sometimes OK", because I don't know if it always OK
> for us to get 401 and continue.  If the end user got a 401 and then does
> not have a good username or password (e.g. he realizes that the URL he
> accessed was incorrect), he used to see "you are not allowed to access
> this repository" with a clean failure, but now he would have to get out of
> "who are you?" interaction (and how would he do that?).  Would that be a
> problem?

They did not get a clean failure, it looks like this:

--
$ git clone http://github.dev/defunkt/ambition.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /private/tmp/svn/ambition/.git/
error: The requested URL returned error: 401 while accessing
http://github.dev/defunkt/ambition.git/info/refs

fatal: HTTP request failed
--

"401 while accessing X, HTTP request failed" is not really a clean
failure.  Most people don't know what a 401 is.  With this patch, if
they get prompted for a user/pass on 401 and it still fails, they see
this:

--
$  ~/bin/git clone http://github.dev/defunkt/ambition.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /private/tmp/svn/ambition/.git/
Username:
Password:
fatal: Authentication failed
--

I think "Authentication failed" is a bit cleaner.  I'm sending another
patch with the comment format change and message update.

Scott