Heroku Buildpack for GitHub Authentication

This is a Heroku buildpack that enables authenticated GitHub operations within a Heroku dyno.

It detects a GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN environment variable and creates a .netrc file with a GitHub entry.

It is the soul sister of the npm Buildpack.

See the blog post: npm and GitHub automation with Heroku

Setup

First, create a new GitHub access token at github.com/settings/tokens/new.

Then save this token in your Heroku app's config:

heroku config:set GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN=YOUR_TOKEN_HERE

Then configure your app to use this buildpack:

heroku buildpacks:add --index 1 https://github.com/zeke/github-buildpack

The next time you push your app to Heroku, this buildpack will create a .netrc file containing your GitHub token in the base directory of the app:

heroku run bash
cat .netrc
machine github.com login YOUR_TOKEN_HERE password x-oauth-basic

Now you can perform authenticated git operations on the dyno. Note that if you want to git commit, you'll need to specify the git user and email:

git clone https://github.com/you/some-private-repo
cd some-private-repo
git config user.email "zeke@sikelianos.com"
git config user.name "Zeke Sikelianos"
touch some/file
git commit -am "git commit from a dyno!"
git push origin master

License

MIT

Notes

This buildpack was inspired by @timshadel/heroku-buildpack-github-netrc, but the two differ in one significant way: the @timshadel buildpack allows authenticated requests to be made only at build time (i.e. when your app is being deployed), whereas this buildpack allows authenticated requests at build time and/or run time (when your app is actually running).