GitHub Authentication

The following requires the installation of git and gh. If you have not done so, see Development Environment: Git.

You need to authenticate your local system to work with GitHub. Here are three different ways to do so:

• gh auth The standard GitHub CLI (Command Line Interface) gh. The gh command can do much of what you can do at GitHub that is not git. It can easily set up authentication and cache your credentials without a personal access token. The easiest way to authenticate, and highly recommended
• Personal Access Token - Not recommended; prefer gh auth instead
• SSH Key - More involved than gh auth, but how professionals (and software) authenticate to systems of all kinds. More details later.

gh auth

To set up cached authentication with gh:

The command will prompt a series of questions. Below are the default answers. Press enter for each:

You will then see instructions similar to the following:

If you are using WSL, you may not be able to directly open a web browser in Windows from a WSL shell. If that's the case, log in to your GitHub account in any browser and visit the following URL:

https://github.com/login/device

Then, enter the one-time code in the browser when prompted.

You have successfully authenticated with GitHub, so you can now use git and gh without re-authenticating.