<- Back

Multiple Git(Hub) accounts

Posted on 2024-12-08

At my previous job, I was able to use my personal GitHub account for accessing and committing work code, which made my GitHub setup pretty straightforward. At my new job, I need a separate work-only GitHub account. For my potential future self, as well as others in the same situation, this is how I set up my environment to handle both accounts.

Generate Keys

The first step is to generate the SSH keys for your work email. GitHub has a good guide here, so I won't repeat their work. I named my keys personal and work, which come with their .pub counterparts.

SSH Config

Create the file ~/.ssh/config, with the following contents:

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

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

This will let git pick which key to use based on the host. When cloning work projects, use git clone git@gh-work:orgname/reponame.git, while cloning personal projects can be done with git clone git@gh-personal:username/reponame.git. If you have already cloned repos, you can change their remotes with git remote set-url origin git@gh-personal:username/repo.git, or with the equivalent work host.

Git Config

Create two gitconfig files, something like ~/.gitconfig-work and ~/.gitconfig-personal. Set your name and email in these files.

[user]
    email = some@mail.com
    name = Your Name

If it doesn't exist yet, create a ~/.gitconfig file. Add the following:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/workDir/**"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig-work
[includeIf "gitdir:~/projects/**"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig-personal
[includeIf "gitdir:~/dotfiles/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig-personal

For my setup, I have my workDir, which is a parent directory that contains all my work repos, so I use the ** wildcard to apply this to all repos within. Same idea with my personal projects folder. My dotfiles is a repo itself, which does not live within projects, so thta one does not need the wildcard.

Troubleshooting

If you're having key or host issues, you can prepend your git operations with GIT_SSH_COMMAND="ssh -v" to print out what is going on with the SSH connection to GitHub.