How does the drone clone the repository?

Question

For gitlab, if I get the client_id and client_secret, how can I clone the repository, just like what drone does. Is there any API or something？

Answer 1

The is no "GitLab API" for cloning, since git clone native command is there for that.

You could then try and clone with:

git clone https://oauth2:TOKEN@ANY_GIT_PROVIDER_DOMAIN/YOUR_PROJECT/YOUR_REPO.git

(assuming the client_secret is the token)

Or:

git clone https://client_id:TOKEN@ANY_GIT_PROVIDER_DOMAIN/YOUR_PROJECT/YOUR_REPO.git

(replace client_id by the actual value)

---

However, this is considered bad practice, and Git 2.37 (Q3 2022) will display the warning:

URL '%s' uses plaintext credentials

It is better to cache those credentials:

git config --global credential.helper
xxx <= note that value

printf "host=gitlab.com\nprotocol=https\nusername=client_d\npassword=client_secret" | \
git credential-xxx store

(replace xxx, client_id and client_secret by their actual values)

And then

git clone https://client_id@ANY_GIT_PROVIDER_DOMAIN/YOUR_PROJECT/YOUR_REPO.git

No more token/secret in the URL.