Do you have more than one account for GitHub, i.e. one for professional work dev and another for personal side projects?
If you're using SSH to clone repositories this might help...
Setting up your SSH keys
I won't copy the existing GitHub docs for generating keys
Once you've created the keys you should add them to your GitHub accounts, again their article would be better than mine...
Now that you've got at least 2 SSH keys you need to add some config to ~/.ssh/config
, if that file doesn't exist yet you can create it.
In that file, you need to add an entry like this for each GitHub account
Host github.com
Hostname github.com
User git
AddKeysToAgent yes
IdentitiesOnly yes
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_fizz
For each one you need to change the Host
and the IdentityFile
. i.e. if you had a personal and a work account you could set it up like this:
Host github.com
Hostname github.com
User git
AddKeysToAgent yes
IdentitiesOnly yes
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_fizz
Host work-github.com
Hostname github.com
User git
AddKeysToAgent yes
IdentitiesOnly yes
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_buzz
Now you've done that you should be able to be able to test you're connections like so:
$ ssh -T git@github.com
Hi <Personal GitHub Username>! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.
$ ssh -T git@work-github.com
Hi <Work GitHub Username>! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.
Now you've done this you can clone repos like this:
### personal ###
$ git clone git@github.com:fizz/buzz.git
### work ###
$ git clone git@work-github.com:fizz/buzz.git
Updating your Git config to manage this for you
You might want to set up you're gitconfig files to handle this for you. There are a few ways of doing this but I do it like this.
In my root .gitconfig file, I have this configured:
[includeIf "gitdir:~/work/"]
path = ~/work/.gitconfig-work
[includeIf "gitdir:~/personal/"]
path = ~/personal/.gitconfig-personal
And then in my ~/personal/
and ~/work/
directory, I have gitconfig that is specific to each user. For example:
.gitconfig-personal
[user]
email = buzz.fizz@personal.co
name = mg
username = buzz
.gitconfig-work
[user]
email = fizz.buzz@work.co
name = mg
username = fizz
[url "git@work-github.com:"]
insteadOf = "git@github.com:"
In the work
based config I have a URL remapping.
So in you're work directory you no longer need to do $ git clone git@work-github.com:fizz/buzz.git
you can do $ git clone git@github.com:fizz/buzz.git
as you would when you normally clone something from GitHub.
(Thanks to @ccoveille for making me aware of this!)
I recently found out how to do it and thought I'd share, there might be better ways of doing it. Please let me know if there is!
Top comments (10)
Thanks! I agree about having
.gitconfig
that manages different config in different files. My setup uses them like this:Then config for each is:
I guess I could have included some info around that in my post, but thanks for pointing it out and raising awareness of it!
if you want to keep using your ssh trick
you can add that in your ~/work/.gitconfig-work file
Then your settings will be automatic
EDIT: fixed inverted settings
Just added it! Thanks!!
Maybe you could edit the post accordingly
Good shout! Was just testing it and found that I needed to switch the URLs around so it looks like this
Lol indeed. That's the issue when
codingreplying on Dev.to comment from my couch in front of Netflix, 🤣This is interesting, but it has some caveats.
If you are working with tool such as
gh
(GitHub CLI), git-machete, or any tools that avoid you to use github.com thingThere is also an issue. You can face issues if you're cloning a project from work without using your work-git alias
Your trick relies on the ssh layer. So not git one, so if you clone with http:// for once and you have no git config setting to overload http to ssh you won't use the right one
I would recommend something else. Already documented by many people using conditional include in git config file
dev.to/arnellebalane/setting-up-mu...
dev.to/marcobiedermann/how-to-work...
dev.to/jacktt/multiple-git-configs...
Hey @mbgeorge48 and anyone interested here
@paulund described another variation of the pattern you set up, and I humbly helped you to improve.
How to Manage Multiple SSH Keys for Different GitHub Accounts
Paulund ・ Apr 16
There is no .ssh/config changes to do with his technique
Hi mg,
Thanks for sharing
Thank share with us. It gives us more ideas to manage multiple GitHub Account.