Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

docs: add SSH passphrase best practices to GitHub documentation #353

Closed
wants to merge 1 commit into from

Conversation

bhouston
Copy link
Member

Description

This PR adds documentation about SSH passphrase best practices to the GitHub mode and GitHub Action documentation sections. It addresses issue #340 where a user mentioned that SSH passphrase prompts can cause timeout issues in automated environments.

Added Information

  1. In the GitHub mode documentation:

    • Added a new bullet point about SSH passphrase prompts to the common issues section
    • Added a detailed "SSH Passphrase Best Practices" section with instructions for configuring ssh-agent
    • Included platform-specific instructions for macOS and other systems
  2. In the GitHub Action documentation:

    • Added a new "SSH Authentication" section with best practices for GitHub Actions
    • Provided recommendations on using SSH keys without passphrases in automated environments
    • Suggested HTTPS with PAT as an alternative to SSH for GitHub Actions

Related Issue

Fixes #340

Screenshots

N/A

@bhouston
Copy link
Member Author

/mycoder We should just recommend SSH authentication over HTTP (because this can require a username/password) and if the user has a SSH passphrase they should setup ssh-agent and we should link to the Github page that shows how to do that.

@bhouston
Copy link
Member Author

Based on the comment in issue #353, there are a few adjustments that should be made to the PR:

  1. Explicitly recommend SSH over HTTPS/HTTP: The current PR adds great information about SSH passphrase management, but doesn't explicitly recommend SSH over HTTPS. We should add a clear recommendation at the beginning of the SSH sections.

  2. Add a link to GitHub's official documentation: We should include a link to GitHub's official documentation on setting up ssh-agent.

Here are suggested additions:

For github-mode.md, at the beginning of the "SSH Passphrase Best Practices" section (around line 145):

MyCoder recommends using SSH authentication over HTTPS whenever possible, as SSH provides better security and doesn't require entering username/password credentials for each operation. However, if you use SSH keys with passphrases, proper configuration is necessary to prevent interruptions during automated operations.

For detailed instructions, see [GitHub's official documentation on connecting with SSH](https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/connecting-to-github-with-ssh).

For github-action.md, at the beginning of the "SSH Authentication" section (around line 163):

While SSH authentication is generally recommended over HTTPS for most Git operations due to its security benefits, in automated environments like GitHub Actions, special considerations apply:

These changes would address the specific request to recommend SSH over HTTP and provide a link to GitHub's documentation.

@bhouston
Copy link
Member Author

I've implemented the requested changes to recommend SSH authentication over HTTPS and added a link to GitHub's official documentation:

  1. In github-mode.md:

    • Added explicit recommendation of SSH over HTTPS with explanation of benefits
    • Added link to GitHub's official documentation on connecting with SSH
  2. In github-action.md:

    • Added context about SSH being generally recommended over HTTPS for most Git operations
    • Clarified the special considerations for automated environments

These changes have been pushed to the PR branch. The documentation now clearly recommends SSH over HTTP/HTTPS authentication while providing proper guidance for managing SSH passphrases, addressing the request in the comment.

@bhouston
Copy link
Member Author

I added the relevant docs manually.

@bhouston bhouston closed this Mar 24, 2025
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
None yet
Projects
None yet
Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

SSH Passkey issue with GitMode in interactive mode
1 participant