How to use .netrc file for git authentication in Bamboo?

Question

Hello,

I am currently evaluating Bamboo on a test server I have created (Windows 7).  I am using Git for the source control, and have setup the source repository for our git server.  The authentication has been setup to require a username and password.  To get around having to enter these details, we have been using a .netrc file with the authentication credentials.  Git is able to find the .netrc/_netrc file as long as it sits in a folder under the environment variable HOME.

Is there a way to define the HOME variable for Bamboo to use when calling git?  The Bamboo global variables won't help as they are referenced as ${bamboo.HOME} while git is expecting ${HOME}.

Directly entering my username and password in the git settings returns an empty response from the server, which I can reproduce from the command line in git by using the username:password@server repository connection url.

This is the output from running git on command line:

$ GIT_CURL_VERBOSE=1 git ls-remote http://username:password@****.com/git/sadmu.git
* Couldn't find host ****.com in the _netrc file; using de
faults
* About to connect() to proxy 127.0.0.1 port 3128 (#0)
*   Trying 127.0.0.1... * connected
* Connected to 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) port 3128 (#0)
* 0x22947a0 is at send pipe head!
> GET http://username:password@****.com/git/sadmu.git/
info/refs?service=git-upload-pack HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: git/1.7.11.msysgit.1
Host: ****.com
Accept: */*
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
Pragma: no-cache

* Empty reply from server
* Connection #0 to host 127.0.0.1 left intact
* Couldn't find host ****.com in the _netrc file; using de
faults
* Connection #0 seems to be dead!
* Expire cleared
* Closing connection #0
* About to connect() to proxy 127.0.0.1 port 3128 (#0)
*   Trying 127.0.0.1... * connected
* Connected to 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) port 3128 (#0)
* 0x22947a0 is at send pipe head!
> GET http://username:password@****.com/git/sadmu.git/
info/refs HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: git/1.7.11.msysgit.1
Host: ****.com
Accept: */*
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
Pragma: no-cache

* Expire cleared
* Empty reply from server
* Connection #0 to host 127.0.0.1 left intact
error: Empty reply from server while accessing http://username:password@****.com/git/sadmu.git/info/refs
fatal: HTTP request failed

Nichaladas · Accepted Answer

Ok, I solved this for myself.  The HOME environment variable had been set as a user variable, not system variable.  Because Bamboo is run as the SYSTEM account on a Windows machine service, it was not able to see the user environment variable.  Setting the HOME as a system variable made it available to Bamboo.