Prompt for a username when an HTTP request 401s

When an HTTP request returns a 401, Git will currently fail with a
confusing message saying that it got a 401, which is not very
descriptive.

Currently if a user wants to use Git over HTTP, they have to use one
URL with the username in the URL (e.g. "http://user@host.com/repo.git")
for write access and another without the username for unauthenticated
read access (unless they want to be prompted for the password each
time). However, since the HTTP servers will return a 401 if an action
requires authentication, we can prompt for username and password if we
see this, allowing us to use a single URL for both purposes.

This patch changes http_request to prompt for the username and password,
then return HTTP_REAUTH so http_get_strbuf can try again.  If it gets
a 401 even when a user/pass is supplied, http_request will now return
HTTP_NOAUTH which remote_curl can then use to display a more
intelligent error message that is less confusing.

Signed-off-by: Scott Chacon <schacon@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/remote-curl.c b/remote-curl.c
index b76bfcb3d3..07827562b5 100644
--- a/remote-curl.c
+++ b/remote-curl.c
@@ -132,6 +132,8 @@ static struct discovery* discover_refs(const char *service)
 	case HTTP_MISSING_TARGET:
 		die("%s not found: did you run git update-server-info on the"
 		    " server?", refs_url);
+	case HTTP_NOAUTH:
+		die("Authentication failed");
 	default:
 		http_error(refs_url, http_ret);
 		die("HTTP request failed");