Where to store my Git personal access token?

Question

Half the point of passwords is that (ideally) you memorize them and the system hashes them, so therefore they're never stored anywhere in plain text.
Yet GitHub's personal access token system seems to basically force you to store the token in plain text?

First, a PAT (Personal Access Token) is not a simple password, but an equivalent that:

• you can generate multiple time (for instance, one per machine from which you need to access GitHub repository)
• you can revoke at any time (from the GitHub web interface), which makes that PAT obsolete, even if it lingers around on one of those machines.

That differs from your password, which is unique to your account, and cannot be easily changed without having to also modify it everywhere you happen to use it.

---

Since a PAT can be used in place of a password when performing Git operations over HTTPS with Git on the command line or the API, you can use a git credential helper to cache it securely.
On Windows, for instance, that would use the Windows Credential Manager, through the GCM-Core -- Git Credential Manager Core -- for Windows, Mac or Linux:

git config --global credential.helper manager-core

The first time you are pushing to a repo, a popup will ask for your credentials: username and your PAT.
The next time, it won't ask, and reuse directly that PAT, which remains stored securely in your Credential Manager.

A similar idea applies for Mac with the OSX keychain, and Linux with the GNOME Keyring (in 2021, it would need a DBus session and libsecret), but in 2021, GCM-Core covers those use cases.
The idea remains: store the PAT in an encrypted credentials store.

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As mentioned above, the more modern solution (Q4 2020) is Microsoft Git-Credential-Manager-Core

git config --global credential.helper manager-core

You need for that to install git-credential-manager-core, downloading its latest release, like gcmcore-linux_amd64.2.0.474.41365.deb

sudo dpkg -i <path-to-package>
git-credential-manager-core configure

Linux support is no now (2021) implemented.
Although, with GCM (Git-Credential-Manager-Core) on Linux, as noted by Mekky Mayata in the comments, you need to define a git config --global credential.credentialStore first.

See "Credential stores on Linux":

There are four options for storing credentials that Git Credential Manager Core (GCM Core) manages on Linux platforms:

• freedesktop.org Secret Service API
• GPG/pass compatible files
• Git's built-in credential cache
• Plaintext files

By default, GCM Core comes not configured.
You can select which credential store to use by setting the GCM_CREDENTIAL_STORE environment variable, or the credential.credentialStore Git configuration setting.

As noted by agent18 in the comments, using git-credential-libsecret after installing libsecret-1-0 and libsecret-1-dev is a good first step.
But, again, that should be now wrapped by credential-manager-core.

In my case, in Ubuntu, the accepted solution didn't work with a message like

git: 'credential-manager' is not a git command

but store instead of manager worked well:

git config --global credential.helper store

Tested on Ubuntu 20.04, almost fresh install, with Git 2.25.1 and unity 7.5.

Authentication basics

Github needs an authentication key (with certain rights tied to said authentication key). A particular auth key has certain rights, (read private repos, read write public repos etc...) and "acts as a password" coupled with rights which can be revoked whenever the user wants.

Personal Access Token

1. We start with making a PAT. I.E., Settings --> Developer Settings--> Persaonl access tokens --> Generate new token --> Note --> set permissions (repo,repo_hook maybe) --> generate token
2. git push the repo and type the generated token(very long password) as password when asked.

Storing the password in different ways

3. • Can be done in a file and then using xclip to bring it back to clipboard and paste it everytime (Screw this)
   • Cache with the help of git commands git config credential.helper cache <time-limit-of-cache>. But you still have to somehow clipboard the password after the timelimit.
   • Store it permanently in a file with git commands git config credential.helper store (don't use --global). This is NOT ENCRYPTED. You can open the file and read it. (e.g., If someone gets access to your laptop they can pretty much read the Password using a bootable USB (assuming your whole system is not encrypted)).
   • Or go the encryption route as per here. It is not complicated at all. 3 simple steps.

sudo apt-get install libsecret-1-0 libsecret-1-dev
sudo make --directory=/usr/share/doc/git/contrib/credential/libsecret
    
git config credential.helper /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/credential/libsecret/git-credential-libsecret

This allows to store the password/personal access token in an encrypted format. The git config file can be found in the .git/config file in your loca repo as shown here, if you ever need it.

P.S. There are many places that suggest the use of Gnome-keyring but that is apparently deprecated.

Storing passwords/PATs for more than one account

This becomes tricky and it appears as @VonC suggests that we need a Git-Credential-Manager core (GCM core). This answer is enhanced based on my findings in this answer.

1. First install GCM core

   1. Download latest .deb package
   2. sudo dpkg -i <path-to-package>
   3. git-credential-manager-core configure
   4. git config --global credential.credentialStore secretservice as we use libsecret

2. Get latest git

   In my case I had git 2.25 and got error error: unknown option 'show-scope'. It appears that GCM core is using higher git (atleast 2.26).

   So install the latest and greatest git as per here:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:git-core/ppa
    sudo apt-get update
    apt list git # shows the latest git currently 2.31
    sudo apt-get install git #or sudo apt-get upgrade
   

3. Update git remote path with username built in

   GCM core needs this to identify the different accounts.:(

    git remote set-url origin https://[email protected]/user1/myRepo1.git
    git remote set-url origin https://[email protected]/user1/myRepo1.git
                                  ^^^^^
   

Your ~/.gitconfig file will thus have the following :

[credential]
   helper = /usr/bin/git-credential-manager-core
   credentialStore = secretservice
[credential "https://dev.azure.com"]
   useHttpPath = true

Alternatively, you can create a ~/.netrc file in home directory and save your login credentials to it.

cat ~/.netrc
machine github.com login <login-id> password <token-password>