# git + davfs2, is it safe?

2 messages from 2010-02-09 to 2010-02-09. Participants: Gábor Farkas, Shawn O. Pearce.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/22588

## Gábor Farkas, 2010-02-09 16:39

Subject: git + davfs2, is it safe?
Message-ID: <2c173a351002090839v45d01d5dt17e4b4af37e84615@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/2c173a351002090839v45d01d5dt17e4b4af37e84615%40mail.gmail.com

```
hi,

for various reasons our git repositories are hosted using https (webdav),
which is http-auth and client-certificate authenticated.

(linux on both the server and the client)

it's possible to somehow persuade git to push/fetch from such repositories,
but it's very annoying because either you have to enter your
username+password+cert_password
on every fetch and twice on every push, or you have to write them down
in $HOME/.netrc .

an alternative that seems to work is to mount the webdav directory using davfs2,
and then use it with git as a normal mounted filesystem.

it seems to work ok (a little slow, but usable), but i'm a little
worried about possible corner-cases.
for example, will it be ok if two people are trying to push into it at
the same time, etc?

so generally, is it safe/recommended to use git in such a deployment, or not?

p.s: or, does anyone know about a better way to handle the
username/password/cert_password
when accessing the webdav-repo directly (without davfs2)?

thanks,
gabor

```

## Shawn O. Pearce, 2010-02-09 17:57

Subject: Re: git + davfs2, is it safe?
Message-ID: <20100209175712.GB28936@spearce.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20100209175712.GB28936%40spearce.org
In-Reply-To: <2c173a351002090839v45d01d5dt17e4b4af37e84615@mail.gmail.com>

```
G?bor Farkas <gabor@nekomancer.net> wrote:
> for various reasons our git repositories are hosted using https (webdav),
> which is http-auth and client-certificate authenticated.
> 
> (linux on both the server and the client)
> 
> it's possible to somehow persuade git to push/fetch from such repositories,
> but it's very annoying because either you have to enter your
> username+password+cert_password
> on every fetch and twice on every push, or you have to write them down
> in $HOME/.netrc .

This is why I prefer SSH.  You have ssh-agent around to retain your
key for you.

A more modern Git (1.6.6 or later IIRC) should avoid prompting for
the password twice, because the HTTP client should actually reuse
the connection for the subsequent requests.  But I haven't tested it.

You might also want to consider upgrading your server to post-1.6.6
and stop using WebDAV... but instead use smart HTTP for push.
That should only need one authentication cycle to perform the push.


It sounds like its time for a proper curl-agent for libcurl though.
Users and applications shouldn't have to keep implementing their
password stores as text files...
 
-- 
Shawn.

```