Hello StackOverflow Community Members,

I'm looking for some help 'git clone --recurse-submodules'ing a github repo using an ssh key, without being asked for username and password.

I have no issues cloning repos using a properly setup ssh key:

git clone [email protected]:{company_name}/{main_repo}.git

Everything works as expected here and project files are retrieved without asking me for a username and password.

This is not the case however when I try to automatically initialize and update each submodule in the repository (per instructions):

git clone --recurse-submodules [email protected]:{company_name}/{main_repo}.git

When I run this I am asked for a username and password before any of the submodules are retrieved. This is highly undesired.

Any ideas on why I'm being asked for a username and password when I run with --recurse-submodules? I have permission to successfully clone the submodule repos individually (without inputing username and password):

git clone [email protected]:{company_name}/{submodule_repo}.git

Your brilliant assistance is greatly appreciated!

CodePudding user response：

Hard to say without looking at exact messages Git asked. Most probably it's because some submodules are written in .gitmodules with https:// protocol instead of ssh:// or git@.

In that case use git config --global url.<base>.insteadOf to substitute URLs on the fly. Something like

git config --global [email protected]:.insteadOf https://github.com/

(Please note the colon after [email protected]:; it's necessary to map https://github.com/user/repo.git to [email protected]:user/repo.git).

See more examples in https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=[git-submodules] insteadof

CodePudding user response：

Turns out some admin mods on the submodule permissions were causing the issue (i.e. my permission to access one of the submodule repos was temporarily removed).