How to connect your Git repository

In this article, we explain how connecting your Read the Docs account to GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab automatically configures your Git repository and your Read the Docs project.

✅️ Signed up with your Git provider?: If you signed up or logged in to Read the Docs with your GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab credentials, you’re all done. Your account is connected. The permissions that are granted are explained below.
⬇️ Signed up with your email address?: If you have signed up to Read the Docs with your email address, you can add the connection to the Git provider afterwards. See: How to connect your Read the Docs account to your Git provider

If you are going to import repositories from GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab, we recommend that you connect your Read the Docs account to your Git provider.

Connecting your account allows for:

Easy import of your repositories.
Automatic configuration of your repository Continuous Documentation Deployment. which allow Read the Docs to build your docs on every change to your repository
Logging into Read the Docs with your GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab credentials.

How does the connection work?

Read the Docs uses OAuth to connect to your account at GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab, You are asked to grant permissions for Read the Docs to perform a number of actions on your behalf.

At the same time, we use this process for authentication (login) since we trust that GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab have verified your user account and email address.

By granting Read the Docs the requested permissions, we are issued a secret OAuth token from your Git provider.

Using the secret token, we can automatically configure the repository that you select in the project import. We also use the token to send back build statuses and preview URLs for pull requests.

Note

Access granted to Read the Docs can always be revoked. This is a function offered by all Git providers.

Permissions for connected accounts

Read the Docs does not generally ask for write permission to your repository code (with one exception detailed below) and since we only connect to public repositories we don’t need special permissions to read them. However, we do need permissions for authorizing your account so that you can login to Read the Docs with your connected account credentials and to setup Continuous Documentation Deployment which allow us to build your documentation on every change to your repository.

Read the Docs requests the following permissions (more precisely, OAuth scopes) when connecting your Read the Docs account to GitHub.

Read access to your email address (user:email): We ask for this so you can create a Read the Docs account and login with your GitHub credentials.
Administering webhooks (admin:repo_hook): We ask for this so we can create webhooks on your repositories when you import them into Read the Docs. This allows us to build the docs when you push new commits.
Read access to your organizations (read:org): We ask for this so we know which organizations you have access to. This allows you to filter repositories by organization when importing repositories.
Repository status (repo:status): Repository statuses allow Read the Docs to report the status (eg. passed, failed, pending) of pull requests to GitHub. This is used for a feature currently in beta testing that builds documentation on each pull request similar to a continuous integration service.

Note

Read the Docs for Business asks for one additional permission (repo) to allow access to private repositories and to allow us to setup SSH keys to clone your private repositories. Unfortunately, this is the permission for read/write control of the repository but there isn’t a more granular permission that only allows setting up SSH keys for read access.

We request permissions for:

Administering your repositories (repository:admin): We ask for this so we can create webhooks on your repositories when you import them into Read the Docs. This allows us to build the docs when you push new commits. NB! This permission scope does not include any write access to code.
Reading your account information including your email address: We ask for this so you can create a Read the Docs account and login with your Bitbucket credentials.
Read access to your team memberships: We ask for this so we know which organizations you have access to. This allows you to filter repositories by organization when importing repositories.
Read access to your repositories: We ask for this so we know which repositories you have access to.

To read more about Bitbucket permissions, see official Bitbucket documentation on API scopes

Like the others, we request permissions for:

Reading your account information (read_user)
API access (api) which is needed to create webhooks in GitLab

GitHub permission troubleshooting

Repositories not in your list to import.

Many organizations require approval for each OAuth application that is used, or you might have disabled it in the past for your personal account. This can happen at the personal or organization level, depending on where the project you are trying to access has permissions from.

You need to make sure that you have granted access to the Read the Docs OAuth App to your personal GitHub account. If you do not see Read the Docs in the OAuth App settings, you might need to disconnect and reconnect the GitHub service.