Technology

Even though that's a good extra precaution, per person config data, such as keys, should be stored outside of the repo, eg. in the parent directory or better in the users home dir. There is zero reason to have it in the repo. Even if you use a VM/containers, you can add the config in an extra mount/share.

I basically always do a git add -p

Very useful command and it works with other git commands as well.

Everytime a colleague asks me for help with git that’s the one rule I suggest them to use.

Better yet you can configure gitignore globally for git. I do this mostly to avoid polluting repo ignore files with my editor specific junk but *.key and similar can help prevent accidents.

https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore

I never understood why everyone uses it as a ignore list. In my own and work repositories I always exclude everything by default and re-add stuff explicitly. I have had enough random crap checked in in the past by coworkers. Granted, the whole source folder is fully included but that has never been a problem.

Does Microsoft's GitHub offer any pre-receive hook configuration to reject commits pushed that contain private keys? Surely that would be a better feature to opt all users into rather than Windows Copilot.

Users often don't take care to separate private and public environments. They just dump all their stuff into one and expect their brain to make the correct decision all the time.

Put your private data into a private space. Never put private data into a mixed use space or a public space.

e.g. Don't use your personal email at work. Don't use your personal phone for business. Don't put your passwords or crypto keys in the same github or gitlab account or even instance and don't reuse passwords and keys, etc.

Having plain text secrets, or having secrets at all in a repository is always a bad practice. Even if it's a super-duper private/local/no one will ever see this repo.