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Authentication on Windows

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Martin Otter edited this page May 28, 2017 · 3 revisions

The following approach is recommended for git/github authentication on Windows:

  1. When cloning a repository from github, use "Clone with HTTPS" (do NOT use Clone with SSH).
  2. After cloning to your local machine, right click on the root directory and select "TortoiseGit / Settings / Git / Credential / Credential helper = wincred - this repository only".
  3. At the next push/pull-request with TortoiseGit, username and password of the github account are inquired once.
  4. For all follow-up requests, no user-name and password are inquired anymore.

If the above simple approach does not work, try the following:

  • The wincred credential helper utilizes a Windows service and stores usernames and passwords here (prefixed with "git:"):

    English: Control Panel\User Accounts and Family Safety\Credential Manager.
German: Systemsteuerung\Benutzerkonten\Anmeldeinformationsverwaltung

    Delete all entries starting with "git:" and then redo steps 2-4 above.

  • Usernames containing a "@" may lead to errors (so the email address should not be selected as username in github).

A safer approach would be to use "Clone with SSH". Unfortunately, github has the severe restriction that every repository needs to have a unique ssh-key (so it is not possible to use the same ssh-key for more as one repository; if you have many repositories, ssh-keys are therefore no longer practical). Furthermore, building up an ssh infrastructure in a convenient way (on Windows) is a lot of work and a lot can go wrong (putty needs to be installed; with puttygen key-pairs generated, with pageant online utilization; the unique public key needs to be stored in the github repository settings, ...).

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