How to update GitHub authentification token on Rstudio to match the new policy?

Question

While pushing a commit to GitHub yesterday, I received an email from the GitHub team:

Basic authentication using a password to Git is deprecated and will soon no longer work. Visit https://github.blog/2020-12-15-token-authentication-requirements-for-git-operations/ for more information around suggested workarounds and removal dates.

Thanks, The GitHub Team

I don't understand a word of the help page... I did create a more secure access token a few months ago when they first announced the change in authentification, and entered it in the terminal of my mac. I thought that would be it. My question is: how to update an Rstudio session created when token weren't necessary to match the new access-token policy?

Thanks in advance for your help,
Rosalie

Answer 1

@r2evans this was very helpful!

For future visitors of this thread, running gitcreds_set() will prompt a dialog in Rstudio that will ask you what you would like to do with your previous existing user/password credentials.

1: Keep these credentials
2: Replace these credentials
3: See the password / token

By opting for 2, I replaced my credentials with an existing token that I already created on Github. It worked seamlessly!

Answer 2

The solutions above didn't work for me. I had to use:

credentials::set_github_pat("my_pat")

Then when prompted by the pop-up boxes I had to use my PAT as my password.