Q:

Preventing GitPython from asking for credentials when trying to clone a non-existent remote repo

In the program fragment below, I clone an existing repo from a remote location and it works correctly.   
Then I try to clone a non-existent repo, and this time the call to git. Repo.clone_from() requests a name and a password from the keyboard. 
Blocking while waiting for keyboard input is highly undesirable in my application, and so if the repo doesn't exist, I want the call to git. Repo.clone_from() to throw an exception instead.   
Is there any way to cause that to happen, or to somehow detect whether or not there exists a git repo at an existing URL before I even try to clone it? 
import git, shutil

DIRECTORY = '/tmp/clone'

def clone(url):
    print(url)
    shutil.rmtree(DIRECTORY, ignore_errors=True)
    git. Repo.clone_from(url=url, to_path=DIRECTORY, b='master')

clone('https://github.com/ManiacalLabs/BiblioPixelAnimations.git/')
clone('https://github.com/ManiacalLabs/NONEXISTENT.git/')

A:

Putting an empty username and password should do the trick
clone('https://:@github.com/ManiacalLabs/BiblioPixelAnimations.git/')
clone('https://:@github.com/ManiacalLabs/NONEXISTENT.git/')

Note there is :@ before github.com.