How can I pass a password to git in a ruby script

February 21, 2022

I’m working on a small ruby script that will checkout and sync a branch on two different servers. I’m trying to figure out how to pass a password to git when pulling. Right now I have

Net::SSH.start(host, user, password: password) do |ssh|
  # other code....
  result = ssh.exec!("git pull")
  # results in Enter passphrase for key '/root/.ssh/id_rsa'
end

After running the git command it get a prompt for the key passphrase.

Is it possible to pass that in with a git command? Or is there another way to do that within ruby?

>Solution :

The net-ssh documetation does mention the method Net::SSH.start() accepts a passphrase argument:

passphrase
the passphrase to use when loading a private key (default is nil, for no passphrase)

So if you can get the passphrase (from a file or environment variable) in your program, you can add that argument to the Net::SSH.start() method.

Once you are connected, however, it is best to:

use a passphrase-less key for Git SSH URL
or use an HTTPS URL instead, for git pull commands, since you can register once and for all the password (not passphrase) associated with that HTTPS URL in a credential storage.

Using a passphrase means adding to your SSH session: