GNOME GitLab CLI

Git authentication has evolved quite a bit since 2005 when SSH keys were the go-to method for connecting to remote repositories.

Throughout the 2010s, GitHub made SSH the standard while HTTPS quietly gained traction since it played nicer with corporate firewalls. When GitHub eventually required personal access tokens instead of passwords, tools like Git Credential Manager emerged to handle the credential storage, making HTTPS authentication more practical.

In 2020 when GitHub released their CLI tool (gh), which uses OAuth for authentication and suddenly made getting started way easier—no more fumbling through SSH key generation tutorials for newcomers.

I used to have SSH keys installed on my Yubikey, but they were always a hassle to set up and use. These days authenticating with gh is definitely the way to go.

I also do quite a lot of open source contribution to GNOME's GitLab instance, which seems to have completely missed the change to HTTPS that GitHub went through. GitLab does have a CLI tool as well called glab.

Clement Sam started glab as an open source project, and then GitLab adopted it in 2022. By default it wants to connect to gitlab.com using SSH, here's how you can set it up using GNOME GitLab and HTTPS.

First create a new personal access token with write_repository and api scopes.

glab config set -g host gitlab.gnome.org
glab config set -g git_protocol https
glab auth login --use-keyring --hostname gitlab.gnome.org

Authenticate with your token that you just created. That's it-enjoy contributing to GNOME!