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

From: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Date: Mar 19, 2010, 14:16 UTC
Message-ID: <20100319141643.GA16211@spearce.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1003191033022.15750@tvnag.unkk.fr>

Daniel Stenberg <daniel@haxx.se> wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Fri, 19 Mar 2010, Tay Ray Chuan wrote:
>>> When an HTTP request returns a 401, Git will currently fail with a  
>>> confusing message saying that it got a 401.
>>
>> how are you getting 401s? Recently, git set the CURL_AUTH_ANY option, 
>> so if the correct credentials are passed, curl should have "hid" the 
>> 401 from us.
>
> That's correct. It should hide the 401 in the sense that it should try to 
> continue and do the correct authentication procedure and only if that 
> fails it should end up with an actual 401 end result.

If the URL didn't contain a username, and the server returns a 401, Git just aborts with an error.

What Scott is trying to do here is teach Git to request a username/password if there was no username in the URL and authentication is required by the server.

In the case of GitHub, this means they can advertise one http:// URL for the repository. Anonymous fetch just works, and using that same URL to push will ask for your username/password, and then complete.

-- 
Shawn.