Qt Creator 2.8, git push and Macintosh

[EricRFMA]

Hello...

I was trying to access my remote git repository, after successfully creating one locally. I'm running Qt Creator 2.8 on Mac 10.7.5. My first problem was this error:

bq. error: cannot run ssh-askpass: No such file or directory
fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com': Device not configured

As it turns out, there's no ssh-askpass for Mac OS 10.7. So...

Big confusion: The 2.8 doc that I could find doesn't mention this problem. In fact, it doesn't mention the Mac at all. It does mention Linux though, in the context of ssh-askpass, which gave me some clues. As a side note all the pulldown menu descriptions don't apply to the Mac, since they all refer to Tools->Options, whereas on the Mac it's all off the Qt Creator->Preferences menu. But you probably know that already...

Next, I found a sneaky way someone found to implement ssh-askpass for the Mac. It's kind of convoluted (it uses a bash script and Applescript). And unfortunately, it doesn't work from within Qt Creator, and fails with this error:

bq. 129:319: execution error: Can’t get application missing value of «script». (-1728)
error: unable to read askpass response from '/usr/libexec/ssh-askpass'

I'm guessing the Applescript makes some assumptions about the environment that aren't true in Qt Creator. If anyone is interested, the script can be found here: https://github.com/markcarver/mac-ssh-askpass I don't know enough Applescript to figure out what could be going wrong myself.

So, my big question is: Can this be made to work on the Mac? Is it a known issue? Is it planned for a future release? Has anyone else seen this?

It'd be way more convenient to use this feature from within Qt Creator, but I can go to the command line if I have to. And if this functionality isn't ready for prime-time yet, could the option "Tools->Git->Remote Repository" be greyed out?

Thanks for reading, and for any help or suggestions anyone can provide.

-Eric

[tobias.hunger]

git push does work on mac in general.

My guess is that your ssh key requires a passphrase or something. Creator in general does not really work well with user-interaction during version control operations:-/ This is due to using the command line tools and it being hard to find out when those block to wait for a password instead of just sitting their waiting for data from the server or whatever.

You could work around this problem with ssh-agent (which will cache be passphrases for your ssh keys for a session) or by removing the passphrase altogether (which of course has some security implications! OTOH, if somebody can read the key files stored in your account then you are in trouble anyway).

[EricRFMA]

Hi again Tobias! :)

I'm using GitHub, which as far as I can tell requires a userid and password. The cobbled-up ssh-askpass I was using was supposed to get around the terminal I/O problem by displaying a GUI prompt for the credentials, but there's something wonky in the LotusScript running from within Creator which is preventing it from working.

I'll look at ssh-agent, which looks a little daunting at first, but maybe I can bend it to my will.

Thanks!

[tobias.hunger]

Github does not require a passphrase on the keys used and can be used fine from Qt Creator.

I have an account on github, too, so I am pretty sure it actually works (even though I use the command line a lot and mostly work with Qt's gerrit).

[EricRFMA]

Hmmmm... you must have something set up differently. When trying to push from Creator, I get the message as seen above, where it's trying to run ssh-askpass to ask for a password. If I run from the command-line, I get:

@[151] Projects/QtProjects/xyzzy% git push -n --all https://github.com/xxxxx/xyzzy.git
Username for 'https://github.com': @

So it's asking me for username (and then password) for github.

I don't know what the difference is... I also need a username and password to log in to the github.com website.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

-Eric

[tobias.hunger]

Generate an SSH key and register it with github. Then use SSH to access github.

That also has the nice benefit of being way faster than going via http(s)!

[EricRFMA]

After some poking (and prodding) around, I got all the SSH key and registry stuff done, and voílla, it all works! Thanks!