How to push a commit to Github from a CircleCI build using a personal access token

Question

When executing a build for git repository giantswarm/docs-content in CircleCI, I'd like to push a commit to another repository giantswarm/docs.

I have this in the deployment section of circle.yml:

git config credential.helper cache
git config user.email "<some verified email>"
git config user.name "Github Bot"
git clone --depth 1 https://${GITHUB_PERSONAL_TOKEN}:[email protected]/giantswarm/docs.git
cd docs/
git commit --allow-empty -m "Trigger build and publishing via docs-content"
git push -u origin master

This fails in the very last command with this error message:

ERROR: The key you are authenticating with has been marked as read only.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

The GITHUB_PERSONAL_TOKEN environment variable is set to a user's personal access token, which has been created with repo scope to access the private repo giantswarm/docs. In addition, I added the user to a team that has admin permissions for that repo.

That series of commands works just fine when I execute it in a fresh Ubuntu VM. Any idea why it doesn't on CircleCI?

Answer 1

I've used

git push -q https://${GITHUB_PERSONAL_TOKEN}@github.com/<user>/<repo>.git master

and it worked. Update it to be:

# Push changes
git config credential.helper 'cache --timeout=120'
git config user.email "<email>"
git config user.name "<user-name>"
git add .
git commit -m "Update via CircleCI"
# Push quietly to prevent showing the token in log
git push -q https://${GITHUB_PERSONAL_TOKEN}@github.com/giantswarm/docs.git master