Why is a machine's ssh key required to clone a

问题:

I think for clone a private repo, we need to verify the computer is trusted. But for a public repo, not sure why git is designed to ask for ssh key for a machine if the ssh key is not added in Settings of github?

回答1:

If you connect via SSH, Git (actually the SSH agent used by Git) will always require authentication in form of a private key. This is because the SSH protocol actually does not care whether you're accessing a public or private repository.

You can easily determine the protocol that's used for cloning by looking at the remote URL. SSH urls look like this:

1. ssh://[e-mail]/<user>/<repo>.git
2. [e-mail]:<user>/<repo>.git

However, on GitHub you can always clone public repositories using the git:// protocol instead of ssh://, which does not require authentication:

git clone git://github.com/<user>/<repo>.git

Alternatively, use HTTPS, which will (if memory serves) require authentication only for private repositories:

git clone https://github.com/<user>/<repo>.git

回答2:

Git will need a ssh key only if you are using ssh protocol - there doesn't exist such a thing as anonymous ssh, ssh needs a key (an account) to work.

If you use git or https protocol, no ssh key is needed. If you don't want to use accounts / authentication, git protocol might be your best bet.

(More information on git protocols)