Passwordless Git over HTTP(s) for Overleaf
Believe it or not, you can work with overleaf via Git. Under the project’s menu you can choose Git under the sync options.
This is brilliant if you still prefer the old-school way of writing LaTeX
(directly on your computer using $EDITOR as god intended) but are
collaborating with people who prefer the Overleaf workflow and ease of use.
However, one minor drawback is that you cannot upload your ssh key for
passwordless authentication. This is where git-credential helpers come in.
In your ~/.gitconfig you can define a “helper” for Overleaf. The general block
goes as follows
[credential "https://git.overleaf.com"]
username = <USERNAME>
helper = "!f() { test \"$1\" = get && echo password=<PASSWORD>; }; f"
The leading ! of the helper command tells git to interpret this as a shell
command; which in turn gives us a lot of flexibility. We only need to know that
git passes an argument to the helper command which is either get, store or
erase. We only need to get the credential value.
Since we may not want our password to be stored in the ~/.gitconfig in
plaintext, we can also evaluate a command. For example, if you use
pass
helper = "!f() { test \"$1\" = get && echo password=$(pass overleaf); }; f"
or more crudely, directly with gpg
helper = "!f() { test \"$1\" = get && echo password=$(gpg -dq ~/.overleaf.gpg); }; f"
Git is documented very well in general, and using password credential helpers is
no exception. Looking under man gitcredentials will likely answer any further
questions.
Happy Overleafing via git.