What's the best encrypted git credential helper for Linux?

Question

I've been looking for a good encrypted git credential helper for Linux (something that can store passwords in an encrypted way, and retrieve them later, conforming to the git-credential protocol), and I'm really surprised that not much seems to be turning up.

In all of the git docs and related git-credential documentation I've seen, they don't even mention the existence of such a thing. It always mentions osxkeychain for Mac, but then if you're running Linux it just redirects you to the doc that explains how to use "cache" as a helper. Some of the references mention Microsoft's git credential manager to use for Windows. But nothing for Linux.

Using cache seems like a semi-okay solution if you use actual passwords. Not terrible, but far from ideal. But if you're using Personal Access Tokens (which you have to use if you want to maintain 2 Factor security on the account for your repo), then that's a no-go. Having to type in one of those randomly-generated PAT's once in a while, no matter how infrequent, is a really bad idea. You can't realistically memorize them, and storing them somewhere in plain text is a security compromise. (Also, what if you want to automate some git operations? Not going to work.)

So--what is the solution here? If it exists for both Windows and Mac, I'm sure there is at least one good option for Linux, probably many. I've heard you can do it with Gnome, for instance. But if you don't have Gnome, what should you do? I've heard that Microsoft's manager for Windows may run under Linux, but haven't tried it yet. Is that the only option out there? Is there an open source option?

Answer 1

This is what we have in git sources: https://github.com/git/git/tree/master/contrib/credential

So you can use gnome-keyring (deprecated), libsecret or gpg-encrypted .netrc.

libsecret could be used with any Linux distribution without GNOME, I believe.

git config --global credential.helper /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/credential/libsecret/git-credential-libsecret

See https://stackoverflow.com/a/40312117/7976758.

This is how to use gpg-encrypted .netrc: https://stackoverflow.com/a/18362082/7976758.

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Reminder: libgnome-keyring is specific to GNOME and is:

• deprecated since January 2014
• completely removed with Git 2.41 (Q2 2023)

Answer 2

Try git-credential-oauth, included in many Linux distributions including Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu.

No more passwords! No more personal access tokens! No more SSH keys!

A Git credential helper that securely authenticates to GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket and other forges using OAuth.

The first time you push, the helper will open a browser window to authenticate. Subsequent pushes within storage lifetime require no interaction.

This is compatible with any storage helper you choose, such as git-credential-cache or git-credential-libsecret.

Answer 3

If you already use a password manager like 1Password or Lastpass or pass or gopass you can probably use that for managing your git credentials as long as you are only using it on your local system or one that you trust.

I did a quick search and found a few git-credential-APPNAME helpers for each of the above (gopass should be compatible with the pass implementation).