git-sync using github personal access token (PAT) for git submodules

Question

I have a Github repo which I configure in git-sync to sync files with my Kubernetes airflow instance by specifying the repo URL with PAT token like below:

https://<PAT>@github.com/org/dag_repo.git`

(PAT token is inserted by CI/CD and not committed to github to the dag_repo)

This Github repo also has multiple other GitHub Repos added as git submodules using the command:

git submodule add https://<PAT>@github.com/org/test-git-sync.git

My .gitmodules file looks like the below:

[submodule "test-git-sync"]
    path = test-git-sync
    url = https://<PAT>@github.com/org/test-git-sync.git

So in the submodule file git is saving the PAT token which is sensitive - thus I cannot commit it to Github

I tried adding the submodule repo without a PAT token - but in this case, git-sync is not able to check out the submodule because the submodule repo is private and no auth is specified.

• Is there a way to configure git-sync to use the same PAT token used in main repo to checkout submodules also ?
• Is it possible to parametrize the PAT token in the .gitmodules file and then git-sync can inject PAT during run-time?

Answer 1

It is possible to provide relative paths in the git submodule to use the same repo config as the parent. In my case the below config in .gitmodules file made it work:

[submodule "test-git-sync"]
    path = test-git-sync
    url = ../test-git-sync.git # use relative path