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Using Personal Access Tokens(PAT) to clone Azure DevOps Git Repositories

When working with Azure DevOps repositories, Personal Access Tokens (PATs) offer an alternative to traditional authentication. Although I would not recommend them for general usage, there are some scenario's where a PAT is a secure option providing security through scoped permissions, expiration dates, and the ability to revoke access without changing your primary credentials.

I had a situation where I needed to clone a set of GIT repositories and run a scan on each repository. As the script would be running for a long time I thought it would be better to create and use a PAT instead of my own account.

Creating a Personal Access Token (PAT)

  1. Sign in to your Azure DevOps organization
  2. Click on your profile icon in the top right corner
  3. Select "Personal access tokens"
  4. Click "+ New Token"
  5. Configure your token:
    • Give it a meaningful name
    • Set an expiration date
    • Select the organization
    • Under "Scopes," select "Code" with "Read" permissions (or "Read & write" if you need to push changes)
  6. Click "Create"
Important: Copy the token immediately and store it securely. You won't be able to see it again.

Cloning an Azure DevOps Git repo using a PAT

Depending if you are using Azure Devops Services (cloud) or Azure DevOps Server (on-prem) the approach is a little bit different:

Method 1: Azure DevOps Services (Cloud)

For Azure DevOps Services (the cloud-hosted version), you can embed the PAT directly in the clone URL:

git clone https://<PAT>@<organization>.visualstudio.com/<organization>/_git/<repository>

Method 2: Azure DevOps Server (On-Premises)

For Azure DevOps Server installations, the authentication method differs. You need to use the Authorization header with Base64-encoded credentials:

git -c http.extraheader='Authorization: Basic [base64_encoded_credentials]' clone https://<server>:<port>/tfs/<collection>/_git/<repository>

You need to encode the string "username:PAT" in Base64 format.

On Linux/Mac:

echo -n "username:your_pat_token" | base64

On Windows (PowerShell):

[Convert]::ToBase64String([Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes("username:your_pat_token"))

To avoid typing the header for every command, you can configure it in your repository git config:

# Set the extra header configuration

git config http.extraheader "Authorization: Basic [base64_credentials]"

More information

Use Personal Access Tokens - Azure DevOps | Microsoft Learn

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