GitHub credential helper conflicts with wincred credential helper

Question

I must be able to execute Git commands in two contexts:

1. Within posh-Git (and the GitHub for Windows UI)
2. By double-clicking batch files in Windows Explorer (I have created a series of batch files that simplify Git usage for non-technical project participants)

Everything works perfectly except for push/pull operations, where there is a credential helper issue. With the default GitHub setup, which uses helper = !github –credentials in etc/.gitconfig, remote ops work fine for context 1 but not context 2 (it asks for credentials every time). If I add helper = wincred to user/.gitconfig, then context 1 works fine and context 2 works fine though it first complains:

github --credentials get: github: command not found
github --credentials store: github: command not found

(I assume it complains because it’s trying to use the GitHub helper but can’t in context 2) but then proceeds to execute the push:

Counting objects: 11, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (5/5), 467 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 5 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
...

I could live with the complaint, but the problem is that whenever GitHub for Windows is started, it removes helper = wincred from user/.gitconfig.

The question is this: can I either

1. Get context 1 to use the wincred helper
2. get the GitHub helper to work in context 2
3. prevent GitHub for Windows from removing wincred (though this behavior is probably correct, since I don’t think you are supposed to have two credential helpers)
4. install a different credentials helper that will work in both contexts

Answer 1

I had a similar issue and contacted GitHub support and got this reply:

What you're hitting is a configuration sanitizer which GitHub for Windows runs on startup. We've seen significant issues in the past with other Git clients adding invalid/bad configuration values into this file and giving users a bad experience - so we had to take steps to mitigate these issues.

This is opt-in, and you can bypass this by running the following command:

git config --global ghfw.disableverification true

This fixed my issue