TFS Git command line with special characters

Question

I want to launch a git clone command with my password and username but my password contains special characters (e.g.: pass/word@123 ) :

git clone https://username:pass/word@123@mysite.com/myrepo

The command is obviously not working because it does wrongly interpret the special characters. I tried using percent encoding and backslash but it is still not working. Git says the authentication failed when I use password%40123 instead of password@123. What can I do ?

Note : I am not using github, but Microsoft TFS.

Note 2 : I can not type the url first and the password after when git asks (because I try to run the command from PHP/Symfony (but percent encoding is still not working when using it directly from command line))

Note 3 : Of course I cannot change the password

Thanks.

EDIT :

After testing, it is working on a GitHub repo (with percent encoding) but not on TFS. So the problem is coming from TFS.

Is it possible for you to setup an SSH key then? This is strange though, I've been on Ubuntu since 14.04 and never encountered this ever. — Loek, Jul 09 '18 at 12:38
Yes in theory it should, but it is not working on my repositories. — Damien, Jul 09 '18 at 14:29
Did you follow this article? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/git/use-ssh-keys-to-authenticate?view=vsts — Shayki Abramczyk, Jul 09 '18 at 14:37
Yes, every step of it. SSH keys are definitively not working for me. — Damien, Jul 09 '18 at 14:52
What's the detail error when you use tfs url running git command? As a workaround, have you tried to use Git Credential Managers to Authenticate to VSTS (also work on Linux)? — PatrickLu-MSFT, Jul 10 '18 at 10:25
If I let the @, it does not understand and try to use `123@mysite.com/myrepo ` as the url. `Cannot resolve host 123@mysite.com/myrepo`. If I use percent encoding, it says `Authentication failed`. I didn't tried Git Credential Managers but I tried to use PAT directly and it wasn't working (it prompted me for username and password whereas I put PAT in the url.). Don't they work the same way ? — Damien, Jul 11 '18 at 11:57

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 17 '18 at 05:48

3

Just as you have said, it will treat characters after @ as the remote site url.

Take a look at this thread: How to provide username and password when run "git clone git@remote.git"?

It is more popular to use an ssh key instead of a password when automating a git clone from a guest OS.

If you want to use password with special character, like an exclamation mark, you need to use percent encoding which is often called URL encoding.

!   #   $    &   '   (   )   *   +   ,   /   :   ;   =   ?   @   [   ]
%21 %23 %24 %26 %27 %28 %29 %2A %2B %2C %2F %3A %3B %3D %3F %40 %5B %5D

More details please refer similar question here: Escape @ character in git proxy password

answered Jul 17 '18 at 05:48

PatrickLu-MSFT

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As I said before, ssh keys are not working because of our repository policies (and this cannot be changed). And it is not working to use percent-encoding to clone a TFS repository (authentication failed). – Damien Jul 18 '18 at 07:11
@Damien If so, I'm afraid you may have to change the password format, which should do the trick. – PatrickLu-MSFT Jul 24 '18 at 01:54
No, unfortunately, I am still stuck. – Damien Aug 01 '18 at 07:09

TFS Git command line with special characters

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