Multiple SSH Keys on Git Accounts

Hi,

In this post we'll explore how to use different SSH keys and pair them with an specific git account.

The first thing that we'll do is create two different SSH keys:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C 'your_email@youremail.com'

We'll execute that command the number of times that we want a new/different key, then it should show something like this:

~/.ssh/id_rsa_oscarmcm_work
~/.ssh/id_rsa_oscarmcm

Now we need to add these two keys to the SSH agent by doing this:

$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_oscarmcm_work

$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_oscarmcm

Now we need to modify the SSH config in order to tell the agent which key it will use for the host:

$ cd ~/.ssh/
$ touch config
$ vim config

And now add the following lines:

# Work account
Host github.com-work
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_oscarmcm_work

# personal account
Host github.com
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_oscarmcm

And now when we clone the the repository we need to change the clone URL a bit, so use the following example:

git clone git@github.com-<sshID>:myGitHubAccount/myRepo.git

So that will be translated to:

git clone git@github.com-work:gorillaz/melancholly-hill.git

And just in case GIT doesn't update the remote URL, you need to change it too:

$ vim .git/config

[remote "origin"]
    url = git@github.com-work:gorillaz/melancholly-hill.git

And now, you can use a different SSH key for your commits:

Bonus

GIT also offers a feature to conditionally includes a custom config based on an specific path, so if you use a different directory for all your work repos (let's say ~/work/), then you can specify the following in your ~/.gitconfig to automatically use your work credentials inside them:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/work/"]
    path = ~/git-work.conf

Each conf file can then define it's own user, e.g. ~/git-work.conf:

[user]
    name = Oscar Cortez
    email = work@hoscarmcm.com

There, all set now! Whenever you are working inside a repo that lives under ~/work, Git will automatically use your work email.

And that's it, I hope you liked this post.