Github behind a draconian firewall

August 10, 2010

Sometimes there is a need to work with sub-optimal technologies such as a windows operative system behind a ssh-blocking draconian firewall. How worse can it get?

Sometimes there is a need to work with sub-optimal technologies such as a windows operative system behind a ssh-blocking draconian firewall. How worse can it get? I had this problem while working at a client office and fortunately there is a way to handle the situation as discussed in this thread at github.

In short the best way is to use git smart HTTP support. Starting with a working installation of cygwin with git, I first set the proxy

git config --global http.proxy "your.proxyserver.com"

This should be enough to pull read-only repository via http. However if you try to pull read/write repos via https git prompts for a password but doesn't accept the input for some bizarre reason.

To solve the problem clone the repo using the url:

https://username:password@github.com/user/repo

Then switch off SSL verification

git config --global http.sslverify false