Setting up a github/bundle token for privately hosted repos

private_bundle_install_gist.md

If your Gemfile has a privately hosted package referenced similar to this:

gem 'sekret', git: 'https://github.com/my-private-group/sekret.git', branch: 'main'

You may see a prompt when running bundle install, or other bundler commands, to enter your github username & password.

To resolve this, you need to generate a token and add it to your system.

Generating a token

1. Log in with your Github account and visit the tokens page
2. Add a meaningful name, set your expiration, and grant repo access
3. Copy the token for use later

Setting the token

To successfully run bundle install locally, you need to either add:

1. A token to your local repo with bundle config --local github.com <token>
   1. Confirm with cat .bundle/config and see your token
   2. NOTE: Be careful using this. Some teams keep a shared/committed .bundle/config file
2. A token to your global bundle config with bundle config --global github.com <token>
   1. Confirm with cat ~/.bundle/config and see your token
   2. NOTE: Be careful using this if you store your ~/.bundle/config file in a github repo
3. To your environment with an environment variable export BUNDLE_GITHUB__COM=<token>
   1. Confirm with env | grep BUNDLE_GITHUB__COM and see your token
   2. Protip: Use mise-en-place or direnv to securely set these locally per-folder/repo

Caveats

• For CI/CD you probably don't want to use a personal token. Use a "bot" account (Github suggests this) with limited access
• Each engineer should/could use their own token locally
• You can also use dotenv or anything else
• There are reasons to use each of the above ways of setting a token
  • Some repos have ./bundle/config checked into the git repository so local + CI/CD uses the same bundle config settings. You can use your global config, unless...
  • Some people (like me) commit their global ~/.bundle/config into a public dotfiles repo so I keep my bundle configs the same across machines. Don't store secrets in here if you do this
  • Using environment variables is recommended if you can't use the bundle config file. Use direnv, mise-en-place, or another tool for managing environment variables per-folder/repo if you need to use the same environment variable with different values in different folders

Worked a treat, thanks! 🏆