Alex's Notes

Using multiple git profiles

1 min read

Using multiple git profiles

Issue

I am using a laptop where I have my personal repositories and some work ones. I would like to commit to these using different profiles and secure them using different SSH keys.

Assumptions

I will assume you are:

  • using a linux system.
  • Have generated different SSH keys for each profile: ~/.ssh/personal-key ~/.ssh/work-key
  • Your repositories are on GitHub, though you can change the link from GitHub (github.com) to another repository host.

Solution

\1. Add hosts to your ~/.ssh/config file such as:

Host work-github
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/work-key
  IdentitiesOnly yes
 
Host personal-github
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/personal-key
  IdentitiesOnly yes

For later steps, “work” and “personal” will be referred to as <account>.

2a. Change the remote host for an existing repository:

cd /path/to/your/repo
git remote set-url origin <account>-github:/remote/path/of/repo.git

2b. Clone a repository using the new host:

cd /path/to/the/folder/for/repositories
git clone <account>-github:/remote/path/of/repo.git

\3. Set the user details for the repository:

git config user.name "Your Name"
git config user.email "[email protected]"

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