Using Scoop to install tools without elevated privileges on Windows 11, especially in an Enterprise setting, is super helpful but there can be some knock-on effects to other apps & configuration. One such issue I discovered was to do with Git and Git Credential Manager, so let’s take a look at that.

Installing Git for Windows

Install Git on Windows is easy, just run the following;

scoop install main\git

I first realised something was wrong when I was trying to clone a repo from an Azure DevOps organisation I had not worked with for several weeks. I was getting the following;

❯  git clone https://[organisation]@dev.azure.com/[organisation]/[project-name]/_git/[repository-name]
Cloning into '[repository-name]'...
Password for 'https://[organisation]@dev.azure.com':

That’s weird! I’m sure I wasn’t prompted to enter a password the last time I did this…In fact, I’m pretty sure I just logged in via the usual Microsoft Entra ID authentication flow (including MFA). The only thing that had changed was that I had re-installed Git using Scoop.

So, what’s missing?

After a bit of frantic Googling, I realised that Git Credential Manager had not been installed. Doh!

This is easily resolved by simply installing GCM using Scoop:

scoop bucket add extras
scoop install extras/git-credential-manager

Additionally, I need to configure Git to use GCM:

git config --global credential.store manager
git config --global credential.helper manager

What about WSL?

The above will fix things for Windows, but what about WSL? Well, you can install GCM in WSL as well but that means having separate credential stores. The best experience is to let GCM share credentials & settings between WSL and the Windows host. This can be achieved by doing the following.

Inside your WSL installation, run the following command to set GCM as the Git credential helper installed by Scoop, which will not be in the default location indicated on GCM on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL):

git config --global credential.helper "/mnt/c/Users/[username]/scoop/shims/git-credential-manager.exe"

# For Azure DevOps support only

git config --global credential.<https://dev.azure.com.useHttpPath> true

Note: change [username] so that the path is valid.

Wrap-up

I learned two things from this experience:

1. Always check what is - and what isn’t - being installed by Scoop.
2. Additional configuration may be required when performing a user-only install, instead of a system-wide install.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve found this useful.

As always, if you think there is a better way this could’ve been fixed then please leave a comment below.