So according to this answer, project access tokens are only available for paid users when it comes to GitLab SaaS users, I wanted to know if there is any alternative for it?
I’m currently using Google Colab to clone a private repo while using my personal access token to do it & other actions like pushing commits, thing is that I have other members in the repo that want to use it.
My own PAT is stored in a .env file on my personal GDrive which is fetched at runtime, sharing it with the repo members seems like an unwise solution.
All I need is a way for all of us to clone the repo from Colab & pull/push commits if needed.
In reality each user should have their own personal access token, that is really the only way. They should never be shared, of which you know about anyway.
On my private instance however, I do have a specific basic user account created, and here I configure personal access tokens which I can share between systems for the purpose of updates, etc. But that then requires an additional user, but at least it isn’t a token compromised from my account which has far higher privileges. That said, a token can be restricted to read only anyway.
So how for example can I somewhat automate the process of PAT fetching? the only way I can think of is to promote the user to write the path to his .env file & ask for his key name.