Fixing Cargo authentication on GitHub

Today, while performing tests before publishing the first version of WinSafe, I stumbled across a problem I had with Go a few weeks ago. It was caused because GitHub no longer accepts user/password authentications, so everything must be done via SSH. I solved the problem by adding some lines to my ~/.gitconfig file.

But Cargo still cannot fetch packages.

After a lot of digging, I found a setting that finally worked. It involved adding another filter to ~/.gitconfig, which now looks like this:

# Force SSH instead of HTTP
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/27501039/6923555
[url "ssh://git@github.com/"]
	insteadOf = https://github.com/
	
# But crates.io needs to pass
# https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/8172#issuecomment-659066173
[url "https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"]
	insteadOf = https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index

The “crates.io” directory was updated and I could use an external crate, something that will be needed when I publish my own.

As a side note, all downloaded crates are stored in ~/.cargo/registry/ directory, which can be safely wiped out to clean the cache.

Displaying current Git branch in Bash prompt

I decided to show the current Git branch at my bash prompt whenever I’m at a directory which contains a repository. I found a rather convoluted Bash-esque solution, which I adapted to myself:

gitbranch() {
    git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/ \1/'
}
#export PS1="\u@\h \[\e[32m\]\w \[\e[91m\]\$(gitbranch)\[\e[00m\]$ "
export PS1="\[\e]0;\u@\h: \w\a\]${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\[\e[33m\]\$(gitbranch)\[\e[00m\]\$ "

It’s compact and it works as intended.