The support for the .netrc file requires a certain file format, i.e. one line per host with all information on it. This is an unnecessary limitation as the netrc file would also support the format:

machine host
login user
password secret

which is a format used by many users but not supported by the git client plugin. Also the parser breaks easily as it requires exactly one space between the fields.

Additionally, when more than one machine is listed in the netrc file, the credentials from the first one are taken, not the one from the matching host.