GitHub authentication from RStudio cloud after August 13

[mskold]

I am planning to run a course that requires students to access (private) repositories on GitHub from RStudio Cloud. As I understand, from August 13 GitHub will no longer accept account passwords as a mean of authentication. This will interrupt my intended workflow mid-course. Is there an alternative, safe and working solution for authenticating GitHub operations from RStudio Cloud?

Best,
Martin

[andy_kipp]

Hi Martin,

I think the recommended solution from GitHub is to use a Personal Access Token (PAT) instead of a password for authentication. These Personal Access Tokens can be managed in your GitHub account settings.

The other option would be to configure an SSH key for your GitHub account. You can save this SSH key in the home directory for your project. If you've not used SSH keys before, this might be a little tricky, so I would probably consider using the PAT. Also note: one downside here is that on RStudio Cloud home directories are not shared between projects, so you would need to configure the SSH key on each project where you want to push/pull from GitHub.

[mskold]

Thanks Andy. Yes, I could sort that out on my local installation but am unsure how to proceed in the cloud. Saving credentials in project directories in not an option since it will leave me with access to all the student's credentials.

[andy_kipp]

HI Martin,

I'm not sure I understand your question. RStudio doesn't provide any special storage of credentials for pushing/pulling to your repository beyond what is provided natively by git. When you enter credentials into git, they are however cached in your home directory for a configurable amount of time.

Hope that helps,
-Andy