Configuring multiple github accounts for work and private

multiple_github_accounts_guide.md

In this short guide two sample user will be used: leisure and work.

1. Create two ssh keys, one of each user, and register them with their github account on the site. Let's suppose you have created id_rsa_work and id_rsa_leisure.

2. Configure ssh using two virtual hosts, one for work and one for leisure, each one linked to one of the keys:

    # Personal GitHub account
    Host leisure-github.com
      HostName github.com
      User git
      IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_leisure
      PreferredAuthentications publickey
      PasswordAuthentication no
      IdentitiesOnly yes
   
    # Work GitHub account
    Host work-github.com
      HostName github.com
      User git
      IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_work
      PreferredAuthentications publickey
      PasswordAuthentication no
      IdentitiesOnly yes
   

   Every time you'll want to use the leisure account clone the repo using leisure-github.com instead of github.com. Use work-github.com for the work related account.

3. Now we need to instruct git to use a different account for different repositories. You could just set a local configuration with different username/email each time you download a new repo (perhaps through an alias) but a better idea is to add a different automatic configuration for repositories downloaded in a specific directory. In this example, let's suppose you always want to use the work account except in repositories cloned under ~/FunRepos/. Structure your global ~/.gitconfig this way and create a new ~/.gitconfig-leisure:

   [user]
     name = Work User
     email = user@work.com
     signingkey = 123456789
   [github]
     user = work
     token = 123456787654323456765432
   [commit]
     gpgsign = true
   
   ....
   .... end of .gitconfig ....
   
   [includeIf "gitdir:~/FunRepos/"]
   path = .gitconfig-leisure
   

Content of .gitconfig-leisure:

     [user]
        name = Leisure User
        email = "user@fun.com"
        signingkey = 
      [github]
        user = Leisure
        token = 
      [commit]
        gpgsign = false

All repositories cloned under ~/FunRepos will use the second configuration. It's probably necessary to override the main configuration here if you want to reset some parameters (int his case done for signingkey, token, etc...)

That's it.