Setting up a github/bundle token for privately hosted repos

private_bundle_install_gist.md

If your Gemfile has a privately hosted package referenced similar to this:

gem 'sekret', git: 'https://github.com/my-private-group/sekret.git', branch: 'main'

You may see a prompt when running bundle install, or other bundler commands, to enter your github username & password.

To resolve this, you need to generate a token and add it to your system.

Generating a token

1. Log in with your Github account and visit the tokens page
2. Add a meaningful name, set your expiration, and grant repo access
3. Copy the token for use later

Setting the token

To successfully run bundle install locally, you need to either add:

1. A token to your local repo with bundle config --local github.com <token>

• Confirm with cat .bundle/config and see your token

2. A token to your global bundle config with bundle config --global github.com <token>

• Confirm with cat ~/.bundle/config and see your token

3. To your environment with an environment variable export BUNDLE_GITHUB__COM=<token>

• Confirm with env | grep BUNDLE_GITHUB__COM and see your token

Caveats

• For CI/CD you probably don't want to use a personal token. Use a "bot" account (Github suggests this) with limited access
• Each engineer should/could use their own token locally
• You can also use dotenv or anything else
• There are reasons to use each of the above ways of setting a token