Github login using access token via command line

Motivation

• There was an existing github repo that was cloned from before the github passwords were obselete (Ref: deprecation notice in github blog)
• git pull was failing

Solution

Run the following sequence of steps to figure out the solution

• First Go to Github Tokens for your account

• Then hit on Generate new token

  • Give appropriate Note for identifying it at a later date
  • Select proper Expiration time => You will need to regenerate your token after expiration
  • Select OAuth scopes as per requirement
  • Hit Generate Token at the end

Note down the generated token as it won't be shown again, in a secure place

Now get back to command line (in my case PowerShell)

• Make sure to check the email/username configured with git commandline global settings

  git config --global user.name
  git config --global user.email
  

• Set the values accordingly, if they are not as intended

  git config --global user.name "your_github_username"
  git config --global user.email "your_github_email"
  

• One can check all the config values by running the following

  git config -l
  git config -l --global  # shows only global config values
  

• Set credential helper timeout to probably few hours or a day, so as to avoid the prompt for login on every git push/git pull command

  git config --global credential.helper "cache --timeout=86400"
  

• Run git pull while at the root of the existing cloned repository

  Username for 'https://github.com' : username
  Password for 'https://github.com' : paste your personal token from earlier step here
  

You should all be setup until the timeout happens and the prompt appears again