Windows command line variable in Git command

Question

What specific syntax needs to be changed in the windows command line commands below in order for git remote add origin %repoWithToken% to resolve to the intended valid URL?

COMMANDS THAT ARE FAILING:

The following commands are run in a pwsh shell on a windows-latest GitHub runner.

set repoWithToken="https://"$GIT_PAT"@github.com/accountName/repoName.git"
git init
git remote add origin %repoWithToken%

ERROR MESSAGE:

The following error message is given by the GitHub windows-latest runner when the above code is run:

fatal: '%repoWithToken%' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

Error: Process completed with exit code 1.

The answer can just be simple windows command line command. No need for any fancy PowerShell.

Also, $GIT_PAT is correct GitHub syntax, though it is possible that the concatenation in set repoWithToken="https://"$GIT_PAT"@github.com/accountName/repoName.git" might need to be done differently in the code above. This is in the process of being translated from Bash.

In PowerShell set is an alias for Set-Variable. Is there a special reason why you're not using the native PowerShell cmdlets? If you want to use a variable in PowerShell it will not work with %repoWithToken%. You have to use $repoWithToken. And you can create the variable like this: $repoWithToken = "https://$($GIT_PAT)@github.com/accountName/repoName.git" — Olaf
– Olaf, Commented Sep 16, 2022 at 23:19
@Olaf The reason is I just want to keep it simple. I am a bash and python person who occasionally needs to write a simple windows script. If you have a simple solution about which you feel conviction, I would be happy to see it. — CodeMed
– CodeMed, Commented Sep 16, 2022 at 23:22
Since you seem familiar with CMD the simplest solution would be to use CMD instead of PowerShell. — Olaf
– Olaf, Commented Sep 16, 2022 at 23:25
@Olaf There are a couple other powershell commands upstream in the same script, so that making these lines become powershell lines is an option. Separately, a windows command prompt version would need to do the concatenation correctly. The above concatenation of the $GIT_PAT variable works in bash, but $GIT_PAT is a GitHub variable, so I am not sure if %$GIT_PAT% would work. — CodeMed
– CodeMed, Commented Sep 16, 2022 at 23:32
I'm not sure if I really get it. If you want to use $GIT_PAT literally you can assign the variable in PowerShell like this: $repoWithToken = 'https://[email protected]/accountName/repoName.git' ( enclosed in single quotes ). And you can use it like this: git remote add origin $repoWithToken — Olaf
– Olaf, Commented Sep 16, 2022 at 23:41

mklement0 · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-17 01:03:23Z

Building on Olaf's helpful comments:

set <varName>=<value is used in cmd.exe for assigning variables; while in PowerShell set is a built-in alias for Set-Variable, the latter has very different syntax.
- More importantly, its use is rarely needed, because variables are assigned as $<varName> = <value>
- PowerShell uses the same syntax on setting and getting variable values, $<varName>; thus, after having assigned to a variable named repoWithToken with $repoWithToken = <value>, you also refer to its value later with $repoWithToken (by contrast, %repoWithToken% is again cmd.exe syntax).
Assuming that GIT_PAT is the name of an environment variable, you must refer to it as $env:GIT_PAT in PowerShell variable (with explicit name delineation: ${env:GIT_PAT})
Unlike Bash (and POSIX-compatible shells in general), PowerShell only allows you to compose a single string from a mix of quoted and unquoted tokens if the first token is unquoted.
- Something like "https://"$GIT_PAT"@github.com/accountName/repoName.git" therefore doesn't work as a single string argument, because its first token is quoted, causing PowerShell to break it into two arguments in this case.
- Since string interpolation is needed here in order to replace ${env:GIT_PAT} with its value, simply enclose the entire value in "...", i.e. make it an expandable string

Therefore:

$repoWithToken = "https://${env:GIT_PAT}@github.com/accountName/repoName.git"
git init
git remote add origin $repoWithToken

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