Re: [PATCH] send-email: Defines smtpPassCmd config option

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: May 3, 2020, 09:43 UTC
Message-ID: <20200503094348.GE170902@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20200501235948.GD6530@camp.crustytoothpaste.net>

On Fri, May 01, 2020 at 11:59:48PM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> I think perhaps many folks aren't aware that you can invoke Git with an
> arbitrary shell command as "credential.helper", which of course makes
> life a lot easier.  So if you want to invoke a separate command, it's
> really as easy as this:
> 
>   git config credential.smtp://smtp.crustytoothpaste.net.helper \
>     '!f() { echo username=my-username; echo "password=$(my-password-command)"; }; f'
> 
> So I think that documenting the use of the credential helper is step 1,
> because probably most people _do_ want to use that for their passwords,
> and then documenting that credential helpers can be arbitrary shell
> commands that speak the protocol is step 2, so that people who don't can
> figure out a way to do what they want.
> 
> I'll send some patches later which document the latter feature, since I
> don't think we mention it anywhere outside of the FAQ.  I actually
> didn't know about it until Peff mentioned it to me one time.

This is documented, but only recently did it make it out of Documentation/technical/ and into gitcredentials(7). I don't mind adding more pointers, though.

It's also being discussed in this thread:

  https://lore.kernel.org/git/63f35287c9ced4d674f938bedd439aefa6c46f41.camel@gmail.com/

about how deep into the rabbit-hole we want to go in terms of showing a working example. In particular, in your example above I'd consider checking that "$1" is "get" in the function.

You also could be using credential.*.username. It's twice as many git-config commands to set up on the command-line, but IMHO the resulting config file is a little easier to read.

-Peff