[PATCH 0/3] maintenance: configure credentials to be silent

When background maintenance attempts to perform a prefetch to remote servers, this may trigger authentication requirements. If the credentials are expired, then the credential helper may need user input in order to get refreshed credentials. It is not a good experience for users to get credential pop-ups when not directly interacting with Git.

Add a new configuration value, 'credential.interactive', to specify to the credential helper that it should not prompt for user interaction. This option has been respected by Git Credential Manager since 2020 [1], so this is now presenting it as an official Git config value.

These changes were first merged into the microsoft/git fork in August 2023 [2] but were not upstreamed immediately. The change has been a positive one for users of that fork, as they no longer get pop-ups and they also are not getting maintenance.lock file blocks when the prefetch task waits for credentials. This has become even more important recently as credential lifetimes have been restricted significantly, leading to a higher likelihood that this will happen during a background prefetch.

I was reminded of these changes when liuzhongbo started a discussion [3] about maintenance.lock files and requesting that they are removed if they are stale. This does not address that issue directly, but is an important way to reduce the lifetime of maintenance.lock files when blocked on credential prompts.

[1] https://github.com/git-ecosystem/git-credential-manager/pull/91

[2] https://github.com/microsoft/git/pull/598

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/git/cce1d054-911e-407e-bc26-1c0bac4dd8e4@gmail.com/T/#t

Thanks, -Stolee

Derrick Stolee (3):
  credential: add new interactive config option
  maintenance: add custom config to background jobs
  scalar: configure maintenance during 'reconfigure'

 Documentation/config/credential.txt |  8 +++++
 builtin/gc.c                        | 53 +++++++++++++++++++++++++----
 credential.c                        | 30 ++++++++++++++--
 scalar.c                            |  3 ++
 t/t5551-http-fetch-smart.sh         | 22 ++++++++++++
 t/t7900-maintenance.sh              |  3 ++
 t/t9210-scalar.sh                   |  7 ++--
 7 files changed, 114 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

base-commit: 6531f31ef3bead57a3255fa08efa6e7553c5a9a7
Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-1798%2Fderrickstolee%2Fbackground-quiet-credentials-v1
Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-1798/derrickstolee/background-quiet-credentials-v1
Pull-Request: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/1798