GitHub Secrets

From Pexels Ashutosh Sonwani

I have a few workflows that do things outside the repo, for example one of my teaching repositories contains full worked solutions, but I copy blank templates over to a template repo. This blog is automatically deployed by Hugo, and yes I know that’s massive overkill but I did that to remind me how the tooling worked in case I did something important with it. It doesn’t matter if I “break” my blog and lose the ability to update posts. It does matter if I can’t fix a bug in a teaching repository.

One of the problems is that this a mouse intensive process, using very different parts of the GitHub screen which means it’s both physically challenging and just isn’t quite sinking in.

Anyway, here’s how I renew a token.

First, I go to the tokens page https://github.com/settings/tokens. I’m not using any Tokens (classic). So in my case I just need to refresh the right token. This will require further authentication, and what helps no end is that it tells me which repositories it grants access to.

Then I need to copy the token and wander over using the maniacal obdurate uncomfortable sprain encoder (MOUSE) and visit the settings of the target repository, specifically the secrets and variables / actions. Paste it in and all should be good for another little while.