setup multiple github accounts

In case you want to do your personal and work tasks on the same machine..

We would be using ssh to authenticate with github.

Quick overview of how ssh works :

You generate public and private keys by running ssh-keygen -t rsa
Public keys are shared with other entities. You would be adding this key in the SSH and GPG keys
section of your github account.
Now whenever you clone or interact with git, these two keys are validated and you can work on your repo.

Every gitconfig of your account will be associated with a ssh key pair. In this case we would be generating two,
for personal and work tasks.

Structure your directory for different profiles :

Assuming your directory structure looks like this

~/
    |__.gitconfig
    |__work/
    |__personal/

Create two different gitconfig files, different for each directory. Like this

~/
|__.gitconfig
|__work/
    |_.gitconfig.work
|__personal/
    |_.gitconfig.personal

We will update the .work and .personal files later after generating the resp keys.

Note : Create ./ssh dir in $HOME if not already.

To add/modify ssh settings, create config file under this directory. ~/.ssh/config

Step1 : Generate the ssh keys for each.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "personal@email.com" -f "github-personal"
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "work@email.com" -f "github-work"

-C = comment and -f = filename storing the keys

Leave passphrase/password empty. These are optional. Press enter after which the public and private keys will be generated.

Those will look something like this generated under ~/.ssh

github-personal
github-personal.pub 

github-work
github-work.pub

Step2 : Add/Save these keys to the ssh-agent

ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/github-work
ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/github-personal

You can check your saved keys via ssh-add -l

Step3 : Copy the public keys and paste in the SSH and GPG keys section in the respective
github account settings.

pbcopy < ~/.ssh/github-work.pub
pbcopy < ~/.ssh/github-personal.pub

Step4 : Modify the config file to configure separate keys for separate profiles.

Hopefully you have created a config file under ~/.ssh as explained before.

~/.ssh/config

# work
Host github.com-github-work
    Hostname github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github-work
 
# personal
Host github.com-github-personal
    Hostname github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github-personal

Step5 : Update the gitconfig files in each of the directory.

Work :

~/work/.gitconfig.work

[user]
    email = work@email.com
    name = workypy
 
[github]
    user = "workypy" # your actual github username
 
[core]
    sshCommand = "ssh -i ~/.ssh/github-work"

Personal :

~/personal/.gitconfig.personal

[user]
    email = personal@email.com
    name = personalpy
 
[github]
    user = "personalypy"
 
[core]
    sshCommand = "ssh -i ~/.ssh/github-personal"

Step6 : Update your root .gitconfig file to tell git to use different configs for different directories.

~/.gitconfig

 
[includeIf "gitdir:~/work/"] # include for all .git projects under work/ 
path = ~/work/.gitconfig.work
 
[includeIf "gitdir:~/personal/"]
path = ~/personal/.gitconfig.personal
 
[core]
excludesfile = ~/.gitignore      # valid everywhere

Step7 : Clone a repo using the ssh url and try push/pull/commit in each directory to verify correct credentials
are being used or not. You can also check via git config --list.

Fin. Enjoy hacking!

dbmusings

setup multiple github accounts