Npm install on GitHub Pull Request fails for the package referenced from a public GitHub repository - github

Question

In the package.json file, I have added a dependency that is referencing one of our public repositories. The dependency in the package.json looks like below:
"ffprobe-static": "git+https://github.com/company-name/repo-name.git",
I can successfully run npm install locally and use this dependency, but when I push this code, our GitHub workflows where we execute npm install fails with the below error:
npm ERR! Warning: Permanently added the RSA host key for IP address 'x.x.x.x' to the list of known hosts.
npm ERR! git#github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
npm ERR! fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Please make sure you have the correct access rights
npm ERR! and the repository exists.
I don't understand the reason for this error, since the repository we are referencing is public, and also I can access the same repository when I install dependencies locally.
Note that the repository that is running this code is a private repository, but the referenced repository is public, but under the same organization.

Answer 1

I was able to fix it by adding the below step after checkout in the YAML file. Also, set the persist-credentials option to false in the checkout step.
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout#v2
with:
persist-credentials: false
- name: Reconfigure git to use HTTP authentication
run: >
git config --global url."https://github.com/".insteadOf
ssh://git#github.com/

Answer 2

You might try a config to force https URLs, at least for testing, in your GitHub workflow:
- name: Fix URL access
run: echo -e '[url "https://github.com/"]\n insteadOf = "ssh://git#github.com/"' >> ~/.gitconfig
- name: Checkout server
uses: actions/checkout#v2
...
Or (as in here, just to illustrate where you can put the git config insteadOf command):
on: push
jobs:
check-elm:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout#v2
- name: Checkout submodules
shell: bash
run: |
# From https://github.com/actions/checkout/issues/116#issuecomment-583221947
git config --global url."https://github.com/".insteadOf
ssh://git#github.com/
git submodule sync --recursive
git -c "http.extraheader=Authorization: basic ${{secrets.GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN}}" -c protocol.version=2 submodule update --init --force --recursive --depth=1
- uses: actions/setup-node#v1
with:
node-version: '8.16.0'
- run: npm run test