Installation fails when git is not configured with an ssh key

[dimitribouniol]

Installing nvm 0.40.0-0.40.3 fails on a new macOS installation with the following errors if the user never has an ssh key configured for GitHub:

=> Cloning into '/Users/dimitribouniol/.nvm/test/fixtures/nvmrc'...
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
fatal: clone of 'git@github.com:nvm-sh/nvmrc.git' into submodule path '/Users/dimitribouniol/.nvm/test/fixtures/nvmrc' failed
Failed to clone 'test/fixtures/nvmrc'. Retry scheduled
Cloning into '/Users/dimitribouniol/.nvm/test/fixtures/nvmrc'...
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
fatal: clone of 'git@github.com:nvm-sh/nvmrc.git' into submodule path '/Users/dimitribouniol/.nvm/test/fixtures/nvmrc' failed
Failed to clone 'test/fixtures/nvmrc' a second time, aborting
Failed to checkout the given version v0.40.0. Please report this!

Note that this installation does not have an ssh key configured for git, as I primarily use GitHub via https. Installing version 0.39.7 works fine.

Operating system and version: macOS 15.5

[ljharb]

hmm, fair point. cloning via https prompts you for credentials every time, so I avoid it like the plague (and you're the first developer to come across this problem).

If there's a way to default to ssh but detect when there's no ssh key set up, I'd be happy to review that.

[dimitribouniol]

I don't know what your setup is like, but I enter credentials exactly once every time I setup a new computer (I don't carry forward my install for the most part, so the default macOS settings seem to remember it by default?).

Since these are public repos, is there a reason not to default to https for these clones?

[ljharb]

hm, i've always had to enter it every time, unfortunately, and i've had issues pushing with https clones too.

[dimitribouniol]

For what its worth, the conclusion reached in #3373 (comment) no longer seems to hold true:

% git clone https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm.git --depth=1 
Cloning into 'nvm'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 382, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (382/382), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (325/325), done.
remote: Total 382 (delta 43), reused 178 (delta 29), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (382/382), 385.06 KiB | 3.24 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (43/43), done.
Submodule 'test/fixtures/nvmrc' (git@github.com:nvm-sh/nvmrc.git) registered for path 'test/fixtures/nvmrc'
Cloning into '/Users/dimitribouniol/Developer/nvm/test/fixtures/nvmrc'...
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
fatal: clone of 'git@github.com:nvm-sh/nvmrc.git' into submodule path '/Users/dimitribouniol/Developer/nvm/test/fixtures/nvmrc' failed
Failed to clone 'test/fixtures/nvmrc'. Retry scheduled
Cloning into '/Users/dimitribouniol/Developer/nvm/test/fixtures/nvmrc'...
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
fatal: clone of 'git@github.com:nvm-sh/nvmrc.git' into submodule path '/Users/dimitribouniol/Developer/nvm/test/fixtures/nvmrc' failed
Failed to clone 'test/fixtures/nvmrc' a second time, aborting

Specifying --recurse-submodules=no seems to work though:

 % git clone https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm.git --depth=1 --recurse-submodules=no nvm3
Cloning into 'nvm3'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 382, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (382/382), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (325/325), done.
remote: Total 382 (delta 43), reused 180 (delta 29), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (382/382), 385.06 KiB | 2.66 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (43/43), done.

Would you be happy with a PR that updates install.sh to add that option?

[ljharb]

Do you perhaps have a git config that sets that behavior?

--recurse-submodules would require git v2.14, to my reading, and currently we require only v1.7.10.

[dimitribouniol]

I swore I looked at my gitconfig 17 times but found nothing… though I forgot about a git hook I set up years ago back when I did use submodules regularly 🤦🏻

% cat ~/.githooks/post-checkout 
#!/bin/sh
git submodule update --init --recursive

Closing then, thanks for the help identifying this!