Cannot install a specific git branch on github with pip - Permission denied (publickey)

Question

I'm trying to install a forked repo ( https://github.com/theatlantic/django-ckeditor/ ) on Github with pip but without success.

When I use

pip install -e git+git://github.com/theatlantic/django-ckeditor.git#egg=django-ckeditor

It does install the repo's content, but an older version of it, without the new changes I'm interested in. So I tried to force pip to get the most updated branch, which is apparently atl/4.3.x but I get this weird error, like if the branch's name would be incorrect or something like that :

$ pip install -e git+git://github.com/theatlantic/django-ckeditor.git@"atl/4.3.x"#egg=django-ckeditor
Obtaining django-ckeditor from git+git://github.com/theatlantic/django-ckeditor.git@atl/4.3.x#egg=django-ckeditor
  Updating /home/mathx/.virtualenvs/goblets/src/django-ckeditor clone (to atl/4.3.x)
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
Clone of 'git@github.com:theatlantic/ckeditor-dev.git' into submodule path 'ckeditor/static/ckeditor/ckeditor-dev' failed

Am I making a mistake somewhere ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

The error message you posted:

Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

...indicates you don't have access to the repo.

You might have luck using GitHub's HTTP URL instead:

pip install -e git+http://github.com/theatlantic/django-ckeditor.git#egg=django-ckeditor

Answer 2

A user in IRC came in asking about this similar situation, and I think the answer we found applies here as well. (The user linked to this question saying "the same thing is happening", that's how I came across it.)

Consider the output from the OP:

Obtaining django-ckeditor from git+git://github.com/theatlantic/django-ckeditor.git@atl/4.3.x#egg=django-ckeditor

The OP was attempting to pip install django-ckeditor via anonymous git (a git:// URL).

The error was:

Clone of 'git@github.com:theatlantic/ckeditor-dev.git' into submodule path 'ckeditor/static/ckeditor/ckeditor-dev' failed

If you look at https://github.com/theatlantic/django-ckeditor/blob/atl/4.3.x/.gitmodules , django-ckeditor pulls in ckeditor-dev, and does so with an SSH URL.

GitHub does not allow anonymous clones via SSH. Any use of git via SSH must use a registered SSH key. A user would have to sign up for GitHub, register their public key, and configure the private key appropriately to be used when this installation is happening.

The repository owner ( theatlantic ) should change their submodule URL to an https:// URL, or anonymous git:// .