CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitgit-clone
lige
lige

Reputation: 45

How can I clone a git repository owned by another user without modifying the global git configuration file?

I wish to clone a git repository owned by another (trusted) user on a shared system. Simply trying to clone it without any change to the git configuration does not work because recent versions of git introduced a safety check that blocks searching git repositories owned by other users:

git clone /path/to/repo/owned/by/other ./here

fatal: detected dubious ownership in repository at '/path/to/repo/owned/by/other'

To add an exception for this directory, call:

    git config --global --add safe.directory /path/to/repo/owned/by/other/.git

Running this git config command effectively fixes the problem, but (for reasons I do not care to explain here) I would like to be able to clone the repository without modifying the git config file.

The git man page talks about an option -c that lets users overwrite git config options when running git commands:

man git

...

-c <name>=<value>

Pass a configuration parameter to the command. The value given will override values from configuration files. The <name> is expected in the same format as listed by git config (subkeys separated by dots).

...

So I tried:

git -c safe.directory=/path/to/repo/owned/by/other/.git clone /path/to/repo/owned/by/other ./here

but I still get the dubious ownership error. I tried different variations of the above command but without success.

Thank you for your help.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 150

Answers (3)

phd
phd

Reputation: 94827

Found an explanation and a solution at https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/T/ . The problem is that upload-pack doesn't have access to the config values passed to git -c, they must be explicitly passed to upload-pack. Try this:

git -c safe.directory=/path/to/repo/owned/by/other/.git clone -u 'git -c safe.directory="/path/to/repo/owned/by/other/.git" upload-pack' /path/to/repo/owned/by/other ./here

Can be simplified to

git -c safe.directory="*" clone -u 'git -c safe.directory="*" upload-pack' /path/to/repo/owned/by/other ./here

I tried and that works for me. If that doesn't work for you try the solution from https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/ with upload-pack-safe shell script.

Upvotes: 2

Om Prakash Swami
Om Prakash Swami

Reputation: 178

You can temporarily point Git to a non-existent global config file -

GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL=/dev/null git -c safe.directory=/path/to/repo/owned/by/other clone /path/to/repo/owned/by/other ./here

Another approach, ignoring ownership checks for this operation-

GIT_TEST_ASSUME_DIFFERENT_OWNER=true git clone /path/to/repo/owned/by/other ./here

Upvotes: 0

Sanja
Sanja

Reputation: 326

The command you used is almost right, but it has a slight syntax mistake. You need to apply the safe.directory setting to the main repository directory, not just the .git.

git -c safe.directory=/path/to/repo/owned/by/other clone /path/to/repo/owned/by/other ./here

Upvotes: 0

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