# [Improvement] Separate protocol and path in gitmodules

2 messages from 2019-11-07 to 2019-11-08. Participants: Benedek Rácz, brian m. carlson.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/52211

## Benedek Rácz, 2019-11-07 13:52

Subject: [Improvement] Separate protocol and path in gitmodules
Message-ID: <CAAMvNNQyzMwAhizT-vBpbwfzAAHS6Ycx2tCLZ_eND3SK8WdTGg@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAAMvNNQyzMwAhizT-vBpbwfzAAHS6Ycx2tCLZ_eND3SK8WdTGg%40mail.gmail.com

```
Hi All,

**The issue**
My problem is based on this post: https://stackoverflow.com/q/40841882/2506522

**Use-case:**
Git can be used with SSH or with HTTP. The usage of SSH is easier, due
to automatic authentication (ssh-key). But I have to use git from a
public PC, where I mustn't store my ssh-keys. On that PC I want to use
https's user/password authentication.

**Suggestion**
The root-cause of this issue is that the protocol (SSH or HTTP) and
the path of the remote repository is stored together (in the
.gitmodules file). If they were stored separately I would choose the
protocol easily.

Benedek

```

## brian m. carlson, 2019-11-08 01:45

Subject: Re: [Improvement] Separate protocol and path in gitmodules
Message-ID: <20191108014518.GH32531@camp.crustytoothpaste.net>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20191108014518.GH32531%40camp.crustytoothpaste.net
In-Reply-To: <CAAMvNNQyzMwAhizT-vBpbwfzAAHS6Ycx2tCLZ_eND3SK8WdTGg@mail.gmail.com>

```
On 2019-11-07 at 13:52:28, Benedek Rácz wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> **The issue**
> My problem is based on this post: https://stackoverflow.com/q/40841882/2506522
> 
> **Use-case:**
> Git can be used with SSH or with HTTP. The usage of SSH is easier, due
> to automatic authentication (ssh-key). But I have to use git from a
> public PC, where I mustn't store my ssh-keys. On that PC I want to use
> https's user/password authentication.

You can use the url.<base>.insteadOf feature to rewrite URLs, which will
do what you want in this case.

For example, I could set
url.https://git.crustytoothpaste.net/git/.insteadOf to
"ssh://bmc@git.crustytoothpaste.net/srv/scm/git/".  That would rewrite
the SSH URLs for my Git server to an appropriate HTTPS URL.

It's designed for situations like this, when you know the rewriting
rules better than an external system.

> **Suggestion**
> The root-cause of this issue is that the protocol (SSH or HTTP) and
> the path of the remote repository is stored together (in the
> .gitmodules file). If they were stored separately I would choose the
> protocol easily.

The problem is that we don't know that a repository is accessible by
both of those methods, or even if it is, what the correspondence between
them is.

For example, my personal repositories are under
https://git.crustytoothpaste.net/git/bmc/ and
ssh://bmc@git.crustytoothpaste.net/srv/scm/git/bmc/.  Those paths are
completely different.  There's no way to intrinsically map from one to
the other without external knowledge.
-- 
brian m. carlson: Houston, Texas, US
OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204

```