Generic OAuth implementation for GitHub | Bit Bucket | Git Lab | Azure DevOps

user_877971 0
Viewed 50

I am building a web application where users have to provide my web application access to their repositories in GitHub| Bit bucket| Git Lab | any other code hosting platform.

I have implemented it through OAuth2 for which I had to create client applications on all platforms separately.
Initially it was scoped only to GitHub | Bit Bucket but now I want my web application to support all other major platforms as well.

So my current implementation requires me to create client applications for all other plat platforms which is a hectic because We want to give support for On-Premise version control system as well.

Is there a secure and generic way to authorize to version control system ?

One solution is that user directly provide their Personal Access Tokens (Encrypted) to my web application so that my application can save these PAT and use them to pull the repositories in future.
But I wonder if this is a secure enough or a standard method. If not then what might be the appropriate solution to this problem.

gitlab oauth-2.0 bitbucket github
1 Answers

You might need to use an Oauth2 provider like:

  • dexidp/dex, an identity service that uses OpenID Connect to drive authentication for other apps.
    Dex acts as a portal to other identity providers through "connectors", which do support your targets

  • or casdoor, an Identity and Access Management (IAM) / Single-Sign-On (SSO) platform with web UI supporting OAuth 2.0, including some of your targets.

Oauth2 is not the only option, as illustrated by SmartGit

After some reflection I realized that I actually haven’t had authentication problems with SmartGit and Azure DevOps for quite a while, so I spent some time experimenting to figure out just how SmartGit is authenticating to my repos in Azure DevOps.

I ultimately determined that it uses Personal Access Tokens via the Git Credential Manager.
So explicit support of PATs by SmartGit probably isn’t a critical feature after all. When you install Git (on Windows at least), you have the option to install the Git Credential Manager as well.
As long as you do that you should have smooth sailing.

VonC_63090
Related