If I mention an external user in a private repo, does that grant them access to the conversation/branch/repo? And if so, does removing the conversation will withdraw the access?
No, a user's access is not modified by whether you mention them. For example, if at work I mention a former colleague (e.g., “That was written by #octocat, who's no longer here.”), that user does not get notified at all and doesn't get any access to that repository.
Doing so would be tricky because it would allow people to gain access even when they definitely should not have access (former employees, project members who have been asked to leave for inappropriate behavior, etc.).
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Doing a lot of research I was not able to find a lot that made me be sure that this cannot work.
As it’s stated that Each token can only access resources owned by a single user or organisation.
But my question is, whether GitHub personal access tokens can work across multiple organisations or just with one, the one they were created for?
I did a lot of research but that’s the only info i found.
The now called ‘classic’ tokens work for ALL organizations your user has access to, which was a security problem. That is why they have now introduced the new tokens, which can be limited to a single organization.
I am writing a Github App that is able to create repositories in an installation.
When the App acts on behalf of an authenticated user, I would like to check that the user can (by themselves) create a repository in the org.
I have spent a lot of time on GitHub's API docs, but I cannot find the answer.
My first thought was that this info should be available in the endpoint /user/installations. The endpoint lists the installations that the user can access (either as a member of an organization or as an external collaborator). However, the permissions returned with each entry are actually the permissions for the App, not for the user. So, this is a dead end.
Another direction was looking at the (public+private) organizations of the user using /user/orgs.
(This does not seem the right direction because as an App I would expect to operate only on installations...)
With this endpoint, I can get all the organizations of the user. However, I don't get whether they can create repos and/or what the role of the user is in the organization.
Should I use the teams/roles part of the API?
My App doesn't ask for the members suite of permissions so I would like to avoid this road.
At this point, the only workarounds are:
Try to create the repo as the user, take note if it fails. Bad solution because I don't want to tell the user that they can create a repo if they can't.
In the background, try to create a repo as the user to check if it possible. If it is, delete the repo. This works but it seems an ugly workaround.
Any suggestion?
Other than emailing everyone and asking them (and hoping they respond), how do I get a list of which of my organization's members have created personal access tokens?
My immediate use for this is a rather sad one: Github only supports API tokens with write access bound to users. In years past, some people have created automatic processes using their private access token; this happens in early-stage startups. Occasionally we have the problem of people leaving under suboptimal conditions, so to speak, and of course when their credentials get revoked, something breaks.
I don't believe GitHub provides this information, so you'll have to email and ask.
However, because GitHub is deprecating password authentication for Git, almost every user will have a PAT. Even before this, they were required for everyone with 2FA using HTTPS, and because many organizations require 2FA, that practically means everyone will have them unless they're using SSH exclusively. So the answer this question doesn't really tell you anything related to your intended goal, since the likely answer is “everyone.”
What I would do in this case is create a bot or machine account with its own email address tied to your company's domain, and then rotate tokens individually using that account. If you need to keep track of which ones are rotated and which aren't, hash the ones you've issued with the machine account with SHA-256 and store them in a list. If the hashed token is in the list, then it's been rotated; otherwise, it hasn't.
I have project on Github of which I need help with. It started out as a personal project and now evolved to me incorporating a company and hiring someone. How can I give this person access so that they cannot delete anything and only I will be allowed to accept their code changes or not?
This is a personal github account and the repository is private.
Since the account is a personal account, you will be the owner unless you explicitly transfer ownership. Anyone you give access to will be a collaborator. They cannot access repository settings, add or remove collaborators, or delete the repository, for instance.
However, GitHub does not provide fine-grained permission controls for collaborators of repositories from personal accounts. You cannot prevent them from having write access. This help page provides a list of things collaborators can do in the repository.
You can (partly) achieve what you want by protecting your master branch and requiring reviews for pull requests.
For more fine-grained access control, you could create an organization account and transfer the repository there, and keep yourself as the sole user with admin permissions. You can then give your collaborator only read permissions.
We've set up a Github app so that it automatically forks a repository for another individual Github user using the Github API. Now we're running into a problem that not everyone wants to give us full read access to all of their private repositories since sometimes they contain sensitive data.
Is there a way to only get read/write permission to a single repository and not the individual's entire account?
Unfortunately, this is not available yet. This feature is still under development as you can see in the Gihub Apps roadmap (and note that I am talking about Github Apps, not OAuth Github Apps). I don't know if this will ever be possible in OAuth Apps but it seems that it might in Github Apps.
There is already a discussion about this at the dear github repository. You should check for news there.
Is there a way to only get read/write permission to a single repository and not the individual's entire account?
Not that I know of: it is easier to setup a new dedicated GitHub account where you would recreate the private repos you want to give access to.
In that new account, you can consider all the private repos can be accessed.
You would keep the really private ones (with sensitive information) in your original GitHub account.
I believe you're looking for X-OAuth-Scopes. This is a well-defined header so that you may restrict your access scope to, for example, public repositories only.
The github developer documentation here says:
... space-delimited list of scopes. If not provided, scope defaults to an empty list for users that have not authorized any scopes for the application. For users who have authorized scopes for the application, the user won't be shown the OAuth authorization page with the list of scopes. Instead, this step of the flow will automatically complete with the set of scopes the user has authorized for the application. For example, if a user has already performed the web flow twice and has authorized one token with user scope and another token with repo scope, a third web flow that does not provide a scope will receive a token with user and repo scope.