Handling Multiple Github Accounts on MacOS

handling_multiple_github_accounts.md

Handling Multiple Github Accounts on MacOS

The only way I've succeeded so far is to employ SSH.

Assuming you are new to this like me, first I'd like to share with you that your Mac has a SSH config file in a .ssh directory. The config file is where you draw relations of your SSH keys to each GitHub (or Bitbucket) account, and all your SSH keys generated are saved into .ssh directory by default. You can navigate to it by running cd ~/.ssh within your terminal, open the config file with any editor, and it should look something like this:

Host *
 AddKeysToAgent yes
 UseKeyChain yes
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
 ForwardAgent yes

Assuming you've got 2 github accounts, for work and play, lets get your Mac to "register" them. To do that that you'll need to create SSH key pairs for each account. If you have already setup your Mac to SSH with one of them, or check if you have one, continue on with the following for the second account.

1. Creating the SSH keys. For each SSH key pairs:

• run ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"

• You'll be prompted: "Enter a file in which to save the key" and the suggested default filename would be id_rsa. This filename will be used for your SSH private and public keys so remember to make it unique, eg. user-1, user-2. This step will generate both the private and public keys, user-1 + user-1.pub , user-2 + user-2.pub respectively.

• GitHub has this step in detail. We're not adding the keys to the ssh-agent.

2. Register your keys to the respective GitHub accounts.

• Follow these steps to do so.

3. Head back over to the SSH config file at ~/.ssh and amend accordingly to:

#user1 account
Host github.com-user1
   HostName github.com
   User git
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github-user1
   IdentitiesOnly yes

#user2 account
Host github.com-user2
   HostName github.com
   User git
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github-user2
   IdentitiesOnly yes

Replace user1 or user2 with your GitHub usernames/identification-handlers

4. Go ahead to git clone your respective repository

git clone git@github.com-user1:user1/your-repo-name.git your-repo-name_user1

5. Configure your git identity:

• Open up local git config using git config --local -e and add:

[user]
    name = user1
    email = user1@gmail.com

6. Ensure your remote url is in the right format e.g: git@github.com-user1:user1/your-repo-name.git your-repo-name_user1

• You either run git remote set-url origin git@github.com-user1:user1/your-repo-name.git your-repo-name_user1
• Or amend your remote ssh-url in your local git config file:

 [remote "origin"] 
       url = git@github.com-user1:user1/your-repo-name.git
       fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

Now you can git actions (pull/push/fetch...etc) all you like!

Resources:

• Automatically use correct SSH key for remote Git repo
• StackOverFlow
• Connecting to GitHub with SSH

Special thanks to @pbuditi for your help!

Thanks Jon.

Sweet! I was able to get this to work with a default account for most of my repos, so that I don't have to enter local config for each, using the regular mac osxkeychain method and global config, and then use a local config for one-off repos that use a separate github account to use the SSH method. This was very helpful.

Is there a way to set the username and email in config too?

Thank you very much

Thanks

Is there a way to set the username and email in config too?

@peeyushsingla sure there is:

git config --add user.email someone@domain.com to add/override user email in given repo
git config --unset user.email someone@domain.com to remove user email entry in given repo

same for user.name of course

Thanks it's very useful!

Just a little Improvement regarding the user names in each repository:

You can configure different .gitconfig for different working directories, just setting this in your main .gitconfig (~/.gitcongit)
[includeIf "gitdir:~/[workspace]/"] path = ~/[path where is your config]/.gitconfig

and in this new .gitconfig add the [user] info you want to use in that workspace.
Also you can use visual tool like fork where you can specify to use global or different user info

Thank you! I was missing Step #6 as you mentioned. I had to set which user I wanted to use in the url -> git@github.com-user1:user1/your-repo-name.git your-repo-name_user1

Thanks! that's what I need, it's very helpful!

Its worked like a charm and I faced only one issue and that is
when I checkout the folder structure looks like this:
/Users/vikasbansal/Documents/github/https\:/github.com/<github-username>/<project-name>.git

is it possible to change this structure? can it behave like a normal checkout where there folder structure? e.g.
/Users/vikasbansal/Documents/github/<project-name>.git

Thanks very useful

EXCELLENT!

Is there a way to set the username and email in config too?

Extending the answer by @jamolpe, here is something that I have been using. Hope that helps.

Thanks for this useful post! I just wanted to add that as of git 2.10 you can now specify the ssh command in the config so there is no need for ssh magic any longer. https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config#Documentation/git-config.txt-coresshCommand

So your git-personal.conf could look like this now.

[user]
  name = X X
  email = x@x.com
  signingkey = XXXXXXXXXX

[github]
  user = "x"

[core]
  sshCommand = "ssh -i  ~/.ssh/id_ed25519"

Is there a way to set the username and email in config too?

Extending the answer by @jamolpe, here is something that I have been using. Hope that helps.

Worked for me. Thanks @umairhm

Thank you for this. For me, I had to add ssh-add -K <pathtoKey> before it can be used

Thanks for this excellent article !
After creating new ssh keys for my other account, I had to run this command -
ssh-add ~/.ssh/my_new_key
Then everything was working as expected for me.

Sometime adding the key was not solving it for me. So i started following this sequentially. It gives more consistent result.

# list all the SSH keys attached to the ssh-agent
$ ssh-add -l
# removes all ssh entries from the ssh-agent                             
$ ssh-add -D
# Adds the relevant ssh key  
$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/relevant_ssh_key

Sometime adding the key was not solving it for me. So i started following this sequentially. It gives more consistent result.

# list all the SSH keys attached to the ssh-agent
$ ssh-add -l
# removes all ssh entries from the ssh-agent                             
$ ssh-add -D
# Adds the relevant ssh key  
$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/relevant_ssh_key

Thanks for this. I decided to go this way as I above method didn't work for me.

Is there a way to set the username and email in config too?

Extending the answer by @jamolpe, here is something that I have been using. Hope that helps.

After doing this, how do you ensure you are pushing with the professional git account? The personal details are configured in the global name and email