Re: Improving git's password prompt

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: May 11, 2020, 15:34 UTC
Message-ID: <20200511153416.GB1415@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <5EB963AF020000A100038ECE@gwsmtp.uni-regensburg.de>

On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 04:39:43PM +0200, Ulrich Windl wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> I'm aware that most repositories use "open HTTP" or SSH public key
> authentication, but for the few cases where SSH with password is being
> used, there is a minor probem like this:
> ---
> tester@host:~/iredir> git fetch
> Password:
> ---
> 
> Now if you are working busily with the project you probably know where
> the repository came from, what the username and password is, but if
> you haven't worked with the repository for a while, it might be
> helpful to see the username and host (the part up to ':' in the
> display of "git remote -v", e.g.: "windl@server") with the password
> prompt to select the correct password.
> 
> So my proposal would be "Password for user@host:" instead of just
> "Password:".
> 
> Problem seen in git 2.26.1...

That prompt is generated by ssh, not by git. Any git prompts do say "Password for user@host" or similar (e.g., what you see for http authentication).

The best we can do is print "Connecting via ssh to host..." or similar before running ssh, which would give more context to the "Password" prompt. But would probably be annoying for people using key authentication (and we can't know which, because that decision is made internally by ssh).

There might be a way to convince ssh to give a more descriptive prompt, but it looks like it may depend on the auth system used by the server. Some quick googling turns up:

  https://serverfault.com/questions/849906/how-to-display-userhostname-in-sshd-password-prompt

-Peff