Can I add a username & password to git clone using the --recursive option (for submodules)?

Question

I am using git to clone a repo via https thus:

git clone https://username:password@alocation/git/repo.git

This is fine but it has a large number of subrepos to clone as well so I am using the --recursive option.

Problem here is that for the top level it takes the username & pass specified but for each sub repo it asks for the details again so I get the following:

C:>git clone --recursive https://username:password@alocation/git/repo.git
Cloning into repo...
remote: Counting objects: 15, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (15/15), done.
remote: Total 15 (delta 8), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (15/15), done.
Submodule 'sub1' (https://alocation/git/repo.sub1) registered for path 'sub1'
Submodule 'sub2' (https://alocation/git/repo.sub2) registered for path 'sub2'
Submodule 'sub3' (https://alocation/git/repo.sub3) registered for path 'sub3'
Submodule 'sub4' (https://alocation/git/repo.sub4) registered for path 'sub4'
Cloning into sub1...
Username:
Password:
remote: Counting objects: 10, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (8/8), done.
remote: Total 10 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (10/10), done.
Username:
..............................etc....

Can I give the username & password separably so I don't have to enter each time.

Obvious use case is for a deep subrepo structure like this where there are lots of files. Entering the same data for each subrepo is going to get tedious & error prone.

Answer 1

The credentials should be valid for any submodules with an address supposed to accept them.

One only case where it could fail is when the .gitmodules file points to another repo, as illustrated by the case 214 of the Hunch Kod project.

To make sure those credentials are passed to every request to 'alocation' server, you don't need to tweak anything in Git, but this is probably a ssh, curl or http proxy settings.

I would rule out ssh (alocation wouldn't execute anything as 'username' but would rather have a dedicated user account).

Check your http_proxy and https_proxy environment variable if you have a proxy.

But try also a simple curl https://alocation/git/repo.git :
With a $HOME/.netrc ( %HOME%\\_netrc on Windows), you can specify the login/password expected.

machine alocation
  login username
  password mypassowrd

If that work for https://alocation/git/repo.git (ie without asking you for a username and password), it will work for any other repo( here submodules).