Using Bitwarden CLI as a Git Password Manager

How to use the git-credential-bw tool so that Git automatically retrieves your credentials from Bitwarden. This avoids manually entering your password for every Git operation requiring authentication.

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:

Bitwarden CLI installed and configured on your computer.

• Bitwarden CLI is a command-line tool to access your Bitwarden vault.
• To install and configure it, follow the official guide: Bitwarden CLI Documentation

Git installed on your system.

• To check, type in a terminal:

git --version

• If not installed, see git

Installing git-credential-bw

1. Download the script

Open a terminal and run:

curl -o $HOME/.local/bin/git-credential-bw https://github.com/tsenay/git-credential-bw/raw/main/git-credential-bw

• This command downloads the script into $HOME/.local/bin, which is usually included in your PATH. If the folder does not exist, create it:

mkdir -p $HOME/.local/bin

2. Make the script executable

chmod +x $HOME/.local/bin/git-credential-bw

3. Ensure the folder is in PATH

Check:

echo $PATH

If not, add it to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Then reload:

source ~/.bashrc

Configuration

1. Prepare your Bitwarden vault

• Log in to your Bitwarden vault (via app or website).
• Create a new Login entry for each Git server (e.g., gitlab.com, github.com).
  • Item name: Git server hostname (e.g., gitlab.com)
  • Username: your Git username
  • Password: your Git password or personal access token

2. Configure Git to use Bitwarden

Set credential helper for your git server

git config --global credential."https://gitlab.com".helper bw

• Replace gitlab.com with your Git server name if needed.
• This tells Git to use the git-credential-bw script to retrieve credentials.

Example Usage

1. When performing a Git operation requiring authentication (e.g., git clone, git push), Git will call the script, which fetches credentials from Bitwarden.
2. If you are not logged in via CLI, you will be prompted:

bw login
bw unlock

Tips

• For security, lock your Bitwarden vault after use:

bw lock

• To list all vault entries:

bw list items