Managing SSH keys and repo cloning using multiple accounts on GitHub and BitBucket

github_bitbucket_multiple_ssh_keys.md

Why Multiple SSH keys?

There are numerous reasons you may need to use multiple SSH keys for accessing GitHub and BitBucket

You may use the same computer for work and personal development and need to separate your work.

When acting as a consultant, it is common to have multiple GitHub and/or BitBucket accounts depending on which client you may be working for.

You may have different projects you're working on where you would like to segregate your access.

Whatever your reason may be, handling this in a standard Mac/linux PC setup is difficult.

Use the following guide to ensure you code is easy to manage, all changes correspond to the correct identity, and checking out new repositories is not a hassle.

This guide will work on Mac OS, most Linux distributions and on Windows when using Cygwin, GitBash, or Windows Subsystem for Linux with OpenSSH installed.

You must have Git 2.13 or above and OpenSSH installed to use the following guide.

1. Create keys

You will need one key for each different account you will use on either GitHub or BitBucket.

Whichever site you have more identities with determines how many keys you will need.

A single key can act both as a GitHub and BitBucket key but cannot be associated with more than one BitBucket or GitHub account.

If you already have created a key in ~/.ssh/id_rsa (the default location), you may use that in place of the ~/.ssh/msmith key in my examples or you can leave that key and add additional keys for the other identities.

Create the keys and ssh-add them (make sure to enter a secure password and do not just leave it blank)

$  ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -f ~/.ssh/key1_rsa -C "msmith@example.com" 
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): ************
Enter same passphrase again: 
Your identification has been saved in /Users/me/.ssh/key1_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /Users/me/.ssh/key1_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
...
$  ssh-add ~/.ssh/key1_rsa


$  ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -f ~/.ssh/key2_rsa -C "jblige@example.com" 
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): ************
Enter same passphrase again: 
Your identification has been saved in /Users/me/.ssh/key2_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /Users/me/.ssh/key2_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
...

$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/key2_rsa

2. Setup ~/.ssh/config

Create a file in ~/.ssh/config (if it does not already exist). You must make sure it is readable only by the owner and the group and public bits are set off.

touch ~/.ssh/config
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config

We now need to add SSH configuration that specifies the github and bitbucket hostnames but with a suffix appended to qualify which key to use. We set the HostName to the correct github.com or bitbucket.org address.

Note: Linux users should either omit UseKeychain yes or add IgnoreUnknown UseKeychain (thanks soulofmischief)

~/.ssh/config
...

Host github.com-msmith
HostName github.com
UseKeychain yes
AddKeysToAgent yes
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/msmith_rsa
IdentitiesOnly

Host bitbucket.org-msmith
HostName bitbucket.org
UseKeychain yes
AddKeysToAgent yes
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/msmith_rsa
IdentitiesOnly

Host github.com-jblige
HostName github.com
UseKeychain yes
AddKeysToAgent yes
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/jblige_rsa
IdentitiesOnly

Host bitbucket.org-jblige
HostName bitbucket.org
UseKeychain yes
AddKeysToAgent yes
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/jblige_rsa
IdentitiesOnly

...

3. Add public keys to GitHub and BitBucket

Log into GitHub for each user and add the keys from ~/.ssh/xxxxx.pub to the respective users authorized SSH keys.

For more information on this see: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/set-up-an-ssh-key-728138079.html

or

https://help.github.com/en/articles/adding-a-new-ssh-key-to-your-github-account

4. Create key specific .gitconfig

You will need a single directory where all code that corresponds to a given key will be checked out to.

I prefer to keep all those directories in one directory in my home ~/src and I name them according to the account name associated with the key

mkdir -p ~/src/msmith
mkdir -p ~/src/jblige

In each directory put a .gitconfig file.

~/src/msmith/.gitconfig
...
[user]
  email = msmith@example.com
    
[url "git@bitbucket.org-msmith"]
  insteadOf = git@bitbucket.org
  
[url "git@github.com-msmith"]
  insteadOf = git@github.com

~/src/jblige/.gitconfig
...
[user]
  email = jblige@example.com
  signingkey = ABCD1234
  
[url "git@bitbucket.org-jblige"]
  insteadOf = git@bitbucket.org
  
[url "git@github.com-jblige"]
  insteadOf = git@github.com
  
[commit]
  gpgsign = true

This way, I use the correct email address for both keys and have even set up automatic commit signing for jblige. I also rewrite all the hostnames for the original SSH connections to the correctly suffixed hostnames I created in the SSH config file.

For more information about GPG signing see: https://help.github.com/en/articles/signing-commits

or

https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/using-gpg-keys-913477014.html

5. Setup Git config includeif

To activate the .gitconfig files in ~/src/*, edit the .gitconfig file in your home directory and add an includeif statement for each of the .gitconfig files referencing the directory they are in

~/.gitconfig
...

[includeif "gitdir:~/src/msmith/"]
	path = ~/src/msmith/.gitconfig
	
[includeif "gitdir:~/src/jblige/"]
	path = ~/src/jblige/.gitconfig
	

Do not forget the trailing slash in the [includeif "gitdir:... statement. (thanks loizoskounios)

6. Cloning the repositories

You then clone the code using the SSH clone address (i.e. git@bitbucket.org... or git@github.com..., not https://bitbucket.org... nor https://github.com...) into the directory that corresponds to the key you want to use for that clone.

$  cd ~/src/msmith
$  git clone git@github.com:someuser/somerepo.git
...

Because of the rewriting, git will actually attempt to clone using the suffixed address corresponding to the configuration in the SSH config file but because of the SSH configuration it will use the original hostname when actually connecting to the host ensuring you use the right key.

All commits/pulls/pushes to/from those repositories will use the corresponding config/key/account.

Credits

This work was adapted from the following

• https://medium.com/@trionkidnapper/ssh-keys-with-multiple-github-accounts-c67db56f191e
• https://gist.github.com/jexchan/2351996
• http://blog.bennycornelissen.nl.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/post/juggling-multiple-git-identities/

Here's a related issue.
PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH#1377

Thank you ❤️

The insteadOf = git@github.com bit was exactly what I was looking for. No need to replace remotes by hand or clone with a different url 🙌

---

Note for future readers:

If you set both [url] and [user] inside the same partial, and then want to override depending on the specificity of the path the repo is in, it behaves really weird. It either sets the correct [url] but not the correct [user], or the other way around, depending on how you sort the [includeIf "..."] statements.

I had to split the partial .gitconfig files into sets of two files:

• one to set the [url]
• one to set the [user]

And then write two sets of [includeIf "..."] statements.

---

So for example, partials for "common":

# /path/to/gitconfig/partials/urls/common.gitconfig

[url "git@github.com-common"]
  insteadOf = git@github.com

# /path/to/gitconfig/partials/users/common.gitconfig

[user]
  email = common@email.com
  name = Common

Partials for "specific":

# /path/to/gitconfig/partials/urls/specific.gitconfig

[url "git@github.com-specific"]
  insteadOf = git@github.com

# /path/to/gitconfig/partials/users/specific.gitconfig

[user]
  email = specific@email.com
  name = Specific

Loading these partials based on the repo's path:

# ~/.gitconfig

...

# To set [url], least specific path must go last

[includeIf "gitdir:~/code/specific/"]
  path = /path/to/gitconfig/partials/urls/specific.gitconfig
[includeIf "gitdir:~/code/"]
  path = /path/to/gitconfig/partials/urls/common.gitconfig

# To set [user], least specific path must go first

[includeIf "gitdir:~/code/"]
  path = /path/to/gitconfig/partials/users/common.gitconfig
[includeIf "gitdir:~/code/specific/"]
  path = /path/to/gitconfig/partials/users/specific.gitconfig

Formerly, I enjoyed the simplicity of SSH config way of doing this. I have changed my mind because I ran into a project with submodules. Projects like this have hard-coded committed references to URLs. I cannot simply use personal.github.com vs work.github.com with such projects without modifying the .gitmodules. I even tried that and git seems to have become confused.

Therefore the IncludeIf approach might actually be most compatible with the most projects. Although it is not exactly Windows friendly. Definitely Linux-friendly!

I followed this for Windows natively and it works just fine with Powershell, the only catch is to use [includeIf "gitdir/i:~/Work/vscode/"], the /i is critical.

Awesome article! Enjoyed the read-through. I recently got a new personal Macbook, so I found I've needed this sort of setup for git since I use one account for work, and another for personal stuff.

FYI, I've gathered all the useful steps in the main steps, into a Bash/shell script. Helps for automation purposes, so e.g. less manual work, and also less things to remember.

Please do check it out and let me know (link below). I welcome any PRs or updates to script if needed. I tested this extensively on a Mac environment.

https://github.com/rnag/Mac-Quickstart/blob/main/scripts/bootstrap_ssh_for_github.sh

Thank you for making this guide. The IdentitiesOnly entries in your ~/.ssh/config example are missing the yes argument.

I caught this too! Should be fixed in my script above.

Nice write-up!

Superb