Committing via travis ci failing

Question

I am trying to use grunt-gh-pages extension to commit to my gh-branch. It works fine locally but when I use TRAVIS-CI it fails. It gives the following error message -

Warning: fatal: remote error: 
  You can't push to git://github.com/tusharmath/tusharm.com.git
  Use https://github.com/tusharmath/tusharm.com.git
 Use --force to continue.

And when I update the repo option I get the following error -

Warning: remote: Anonymous access to tusharmath/tusharm.com.git denied.
fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://github.com/tusharmath/tusharm.com.git/'
 Use --force to continue.
Aborted due to warnings.

So basically I just want Travis-ci to commit the files in the gh-pages branch of my repo. Is there a way to do that?

Update The final .travis.yml that solved the problem

language: node_js
node_js:
  - '0.11'
before_script:
  - git config --global user.email "tusharmath@gmail.com"
  - git config --global user.name "Travis-CI"
after_script:
  - git config credential.helper "store --file=.git/credentials"
  - echo "https://${GH_TOKEN}:@github.com" > .git/credentials
  - node ./node_modules/grunt-cli/bin/grunt release
env:
  global:
    secure: {"lots-of-seemingly-random-characters"}

score 40 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 03 '13 at 04:33

You certainly can! The first issue, like you discovered, is due to using the git:// URL to push to, but the git protocol can only be used to clone repositories.

As for the "anonymous access denied" error, that's because you need to let Travis log in to your GitHub account in order to push to the repository. Now, you probably don't want to give Travis your GitHub password, and you certainly don't have to. Instead we're going to use OAuth tokens. If you have no idea what that means, don't worry, I'll explain. An OAuth token in most cases works like a password, but it's easier to revoke access to single things.

To generate an OAuth token, go to the GitHub Applications settings page and click "Create new token" under "Personal API Access Token". You probably want to add a note for what this is, that way it's easier to keep track of and easier to revoke if you need to in the future. Note that this token is essentially a password in that it gives access to the same things a password does.

Then, you need to add the token to your .travis.yml file. First, we'll encrypt the token so only Travis can see it. For this, you need the travis Rubygem installed: gem install travis.

travis encrypt GH_TOKEN="the-token-from-github" --add

Your .travis.yml should now look something like this:

…
env:
  global:
    - secure: "lots-of-seemingly-random-characters"
…

Now, in order for Travis to actually use this token, you need to add some more things to your .travis.yml too.

after_script:
  - git config credential.helper "store --file=.git/credentials"
  - echo "https://${GH_TOKEN}:@github.com" > .git/credentials
  - node ./node_modules/grunt-cli/bin/grunt release

This first tells git to look for credentials in the .git/credentials file. This can be any file you want, really, but make sure it's not one you're going to push to GitHub. Then, we add the token to the .git/credentials file. Git now knows that for pushes to https://github.com, it can use your token to authenticate.

You should be all set!

PS: If you only want to push to GitHub if the build passes, you can change after_script to after_success.

I guess its because I din't quite understand the use of credential.helper. — tusharmath, Aug 03 '13 at 10:31
You could check full build logs here https://travis-ci.org/tusharmath/tusharmath.github.io/builds/9803395 — tusharmath, Aug 03 '13 at 10:33
The error message is pretty clear about what's missing. Have you tried adding `--global` to the `git config` calls further up in your `.travis.yml`? — sarahhodne, Aug 04 '13 at 00:29
Yes I tried. If you see the other builds you will notice that after giving the ```--global``` param it start throwing the same error - Authentication Failed. — tusharmath, Aug 04 '13 at 06:58
If you get the **"Use https://github.com/..."** error change the remote to https: git remote set-url origin https://github.com/$TRAVIS_REPO_SLUG.git — lasote, Feb 11 '15 at 11:50
Thank you! The missing step in all the other guides is the use of the credential helper. — Rob S., Dec 23 '17 at 08:02
7 years later, it seems creation of a _Personal API Access Token_ has moved to https://github.com/settings/tokens and now provides more fine-grained control over entitlements. — Ed Noepel, May 29 '20 at 15:52

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

The answer by henrikhodne is great, but the solution doesn't work with grunt-gh-pages because it creates another Git repository somewhere in .grunt/grunt-gh-pages/ sub-directory. Therefore git config made in after_script or after_success section is not used by grunt-gh-pages.

It's possible to add GH_TOKEN to repository URL used by grunt-gh-pages in Gruntfile.js like this:

'gh-pages': {
    // your common gh-pages config
    travis: {
        options: {
            repo: 'https://' + process.env.GH_TOKEN + '@github.com/dim2man/csbrowser.git',
            silent: true
        },
        src: ['**']
    }
}

Note the silent: true option, it prevents publishing your token value in Travis logs.

Then your after_script or after_success section can be modified like:

after_success: grunt gh-pages:travis

Same with `gulp-gh-pages` plugin - https://github.com/kriasoft/static-site-starter/blob/d1465463e324b6628cb6165d88ae38fb9c2a0dd9/gulpfile.js#L190 — Konstantin Tarkus, Feb 14 '15 at 23:44

Committing via travis ci failing

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