Manage multiple git accounts on one computer

Introduction

Git is a great tool for version control. It is used by many developers to manage their code repositories. But what if you have multiple Git accounts? For example, you have a personal account and a work account. You want to use both accounts on the same computer. How can you do that? In this article, we will discuss how to manage multiple git accounts on one computer.

Create new SSH keys

First, We need to create SSH keys for each account we want to manage.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email_address"

The terminal will ask you to enter a file in which to save the key. You can name it something like id_rsa_personal or id_rsa_work. This file will be stored in the .ssh/ folder in your home directory.

Add the SSH key to the ssh-agent

Next, we need to add the SSH key to the ssh-agent.

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_personal

Note: Do this for each SSH key you want to manage.

Add the SSH key to your GitHub account

Now, we need to add the SSH key to our GitHub account. To do this, we need to copy the contents of the public key files. You can do this by running the following command.

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa_personal.pub

Copy the output of this command and add it to your GitHub account. You can do this by going to your GitHub account settings, clicking on the SSH and GPG keys tab, and then clicking on the New SSH key button. Paste the contents of the public key file in the Key field and give it a title.

Configure Git to use the appropriate private key

Now, we need to configure Git to use the appropriate private keys for each account.

Create a config file

To do this, we need to create Git configuration files for each account.

touch ~/.ssh/config

Add SSH configuration

Next, we need to add the following configuration to the config file.

Host github.com
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_personal
 
Host github.com-work
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_work

Note: Replace github.com with the hostname of the Git hosting service you're configuring.

Configure Git to use the appropriate account

Now, we need to configure Git to use the appropriate account for each repository. To do this, we need to add the following configuration to the .gitconfig file. Consider this to be the global Git configuration file. This has to be done to ensure that Git uses the correct account for each repository.

Create Git configuration files for each account

Here we plan to use the ~/.gitconfig file as the global Git configuration file. If you already have a global Git configuration file, you can add the following to it.

[user]
  name = personal_username
  email = personal_email

Note: Replace personal_username and personal_email with your GitHub username and email.

Since we use ~/.gitconfig as the global configuration, this means that all repositories will use the personal account by default. To use the work account, we need to define a location for work repositories. Let's say we use a folder called work/ in our home directory for these repositories. Inside this folder, we will create a .gitconfig file. This will be the local Git configuration file for repositories in the work folder.

Add the following configuration to the ~/work/.gitconfig file.

[user]
  name = work_username
  email = work_email

Note: Replace work_username and work_email with the appropriate GitHub username and email.

Update the global Git configuration file

Now, update the global Git configuration file to use the ~/work/.gitconfig file for repositories in the ~/work folder.

Your updated ~/.gitconfig file should look like this.

[user]
  name = personal_username
  email = personal_email
 
[includeIf "gitdir:~/work/"]
  path = ~/work/.gitconfig

This means that Git will use the ~/.gitconfig file for all repositories except those inside the ~/work folder. For those repositories, it will use the ~/work/.gitconfig file. So make sure that you have the correct configuration in both files.

Ping GitHub to verify the SSH key

Now, we need to ping GitHub to verify the SSH keys. To do this, we need to run the following command.

ssh -T github.com

ssh -T github.com-work

If you get the following message, it means that the SSH key is working.

Hi personal_username! Youve successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

Now you can clone repositories from both accounts using the following commands.

Note: Use the appropriate SSH URL for your repository and make sure that you use the correct host.

git clone git@github.com:personal_username/repo_name.git
git clone git@github.com-work:work_username/repo_name.git

That's it. You have successfully configured Git to manage multiple accounts on one computer. Now you can use different Git accounts for different repositories.