Configure TeamCity to access private GitHub Repositories

One of the challenges I have been facing lately after moving to private repositories on GitHub is the ability to access them via TeamCity. The issue is that now the repository is not accessible via https and you have to find an alternative to retrieve the source code of your repository securely.

For this task, I will show you how to use GitHub Deploy keys and how to configure TeamCity to interact with your private repository.

The overall idea can be seen in the figure above. First, we will have to create the keys so we can place them in the required section. To generate the keys, you can just use Git Bash and using the command below:

Once finished, you will have two keys, the private and the public one.

Installing the public key in GitHub:

The operation above should've produced 2 keys (files):

• id_rsa (private key)
• id_rsa.pub (public key)

Open the file id_rsa.pub or run the following command on your git bash console to copy the content of the file into the clipboard: clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Now, go to your private repository on GitHub and select "Settings" and then "Deploy Keys". Once there, click on "Add deploy key" and paste the content of the file you've opened before / copied into the clipboard.

Once completed, you should see something like the image below (note that the image below shows that the key has been already used):

Installing the private key in TeamCity:

The following operations have been done to the latest version of TeamCity at the time of the publication of this article (2018.1 build 58245). I tried version 2017 initially and the configuration didn't work (just so you know if you are still on any version prior to 2018.1):

Click on your project overview and click on "Edit project Settings". Select "SSH Keys" and click "Upload SSH Key" button to upload your id_rsa file:

Now the SSH key will be available in your VCS Root. Now go to your build step and add a Git VCS Root that will pull the source code from the repository. The parameters that you have to configure are as follow:

• VCS Root Name: Name of your VCS.
• Fetch URL: URL of your repository in format git (not in https format as it will not be available because the repository is private). In this case you will have to change the https URL by this other git one as shown in the sample below:
• https://github.com/JordiCorbilla/easyTimeSheets with:
• git@github.com:jordicorbilla/easytimesheets.git
• where user name and repository need to be part of the URL
• Default branch: refs/heads/master
• Authentication method: Uploaded Key
• Username: empty (don't type anything here)
• Uploaded Key: id_rsa (is the one that I've just uploaded)
• Password: type the secret word you have configured in your private key if any.

If you now test the connection, it should be successful:

If you have a look at your project, you will see that the project is successfully connecting to your repository and pulling out the changes that are pending to be implemented in your pipeline:

I hope you find it useful as I have spent quite a lot of time just trying to find the right approach.

Jordi