How to Manage Multiple Git Credential for the Same Provider

#technical #how-to
Also known as:
A much better way!

Thanks to Sarim Khan, here's a much better way:

Thats a nice hack. Great to see people still writing bash script in 2023 (i'm not the only bash user left in the universe yay :D). Though git itself has better solution for this.

For example I have this in my ~/.gitconfig

[include]
path = .gitconfig-personal      

[includeIf "gitdir:~/macromanhq/**/.git"]
path = .gitconfig-mcm

So personal and company(can be multiple) have dedicated gitconfig. In those config you can set different name, email, gpg signing key, sshCommand and whatever else you need :)

Also If you use this, no need to manually fix your IDE to different git path :)

We often use multiple accounts from the same git provider (e.g. GitHub or GitLab). I myself, use different accounts for personal and official works in GitLab. Naturally, I set up ssh keys for both. It is much more convenient than typing a password on every interaction. Problem is I can't use one ssh key for all my accounts! There are solutions to this problem based on ssh config like this. One have to be careful while cloning. Also, submodules may need extra work.

Here's how I solved this problem. Once set up, you can forget about you ever set up this!

This solution is kind of opinionated and makes the assumption that you keep your work, and personal repositories separated in different directories.

Let's Proceed

Know Your Current Git Path

Simply by running:

which git

You can find where your git currently resides. In my case, it was in /usr/bin/git.

Create Your Shadow Git

In a local path of your user (e.g. ~/bin, make sure that it is added to the PATH) create a file named git with the following content with necessary adjustments:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

office_repos_regex="^(/Users/uroybd/repos|/Volumes/sources)/office-projects.*"

if [[ $PWD =~ $office_repos_regex ]]; then
  env GIT_SSH_COMMAND="ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_official" /usr/bin/git $@
else
  /usr/bin/git $@
fi
Points to Note

  1. We're assuming that your Personal SSH key is the default one of your system. Therefore, we need to use the official key (~/.ssh/id_ed25519_official) when we are in the office-projects directory.
  2. Notice the office_repos_regex. You should modify it based on your structure.
  3. Replace /usr/bin/git with the git path you got from here.
  4. Replace ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_official with your Official SSH key.

It is a simple script to identify if you're in an official repository and use official ssh key for all git commands.

Now give it the necessary permission with:

chmod u+x ~/bin/git

It's done!

Bonus: VS Code Setup

Visual Studio Code should pick up your shadowed git automatically. If not add one such entry in your settings.json:

{
...
"git.path": [
  "/Users/uroybd/bin/git", // Your shadow git [Don't add this comments]
  "/usr/bin/git" // The original git, just in case.

]
...
}