Running gh auth login --git-protocol https --web does not respect no when asked to authenticate

[tjementum]

Describe the bug

When I execute gh auth login --git-protocol https --web in the terminal and respond to the prompt ? Authenticate Git with your GitHub credentials? (Y/n) with either Y or n, I still receive a one-time code and the instruction Press Enter to open github.com in your browser....

Below is a video demonstrating the issue.

This is a long-standing issue. I would love if there were a way to not even show the prompt as I have this in my one script.

[andyfeller]

@tjementum : thanks for opening up this issue and sorry this has been a point of friction for you! 🙇 Let's dig into what's going on here and figure out what can be done.

_Also, thank you for the screen share ❤ _

Looking at an abbreviated version of gh auth login --help, the --web flag is telling gh that you are not using a PAT to authenticate but using the GitHub CLI OAuth app. The --git-protocol flag is telling gh what protocol to use when executing git commands.

USAGE
  gh auth login [flags]

FLAGS
  -p, --git-protocol string   The protocol to use for git operations on this host: {ssh|https}
  -h, --hostname string       The hostname of the GitHub instance to authenticate with
      --insecure-storage      Save authentication credentials in plain text instead of credential store
  -s, --scopes strings        Additional authentication scopes to request
      --skip-ssh-key          Skip generate/upload SSH key prompt
  -w, --web                   Open a browser to authenticate
      --with-token            Read token from standard input

The Authenticate Git with your GitHub credentials prompt is about whether git uses gh as a credential manager.

@tjementum : What should GitHub CLI be doing in this scenario if not opening the browser to authenticate?

[tjementum]

@tjementum : What should GitHub CLI be doing in this scenario if not opening the browser to authenticate?

If I get a question: Authenticate Git with your GitHub credentials? and I answer No I expect that it does not try to authenticate me ;)

My bug report here is that the tool behaves exactly the same whether I answer Yes or No, so my question is, why is it not To continue press any key or just skip the question altogether?

In my case, I want to answer No because I’m running the same command over and over, so I have already trusted my terminal to communicate with GitHub.

The Authenticate Git with your GitHub credentials prompt is about whether git uses gh as a credential manager.

I don't even know what the difference is 😊 The tool behaves exactly the same to me. Maybe the solution is then to make a prompt that better explains what I'm answering.

Also, I explicitly added the --web so I clearly do not want to use a Personal Access Token. But maybe I'm mixing things up here.