Use many different Git accounts automatically
Preparing the folder structure for using new setup
At the moment I have different git accounts.
I have one for Github (work & private), Gitlab and two accounts for Codeberg (private and a even more private one).
To get this running I had to prepare my folders a little bit. before I only had everything in two folders, private and work, but it all used the same GitHub account.
/home/joergi/dev/projects/
├─ privat/
│ ├─ codeberg/
│ │ ├─ private/
│ │ │ ├─ project1/
│ │ │ ├─ project2/
│ │ ├─ more-private/
│ │ │ ├─ projectA/
│ │ │ ├─ projectB/
│ ├─ gitlab/
│ │ ├─ projectGL1/
│ │ ├─ projectGL2/
│ ├─ github/
│ │ ├─ projectPrivatGH1/
│ │ ├─ projectPrivatGH2/
├─ work
│ ├─ github
When I only used Github, my .gitconfig looked like this:
[user]
email = 1234567879+username@users.noreply.github.com
name = joergi
signingkey = ABCDE123456789
[commit]
gpgsign = true
[core]
autocrlf = input
Creating ssh keys for each git account
You have to create for each project you want to use a ssh key.
I follow here the instructions from the GitHub documentation.
And I add the ssh to Codeberg, Gitlab and Github.
And of course I rename the ssh files, so I can recognize them later:
-rw------- 1 joergi joergi 432 Apr 25 16:02 id_codeberg_more_private
-rw-r--r-- 1 joergi joergi 118 Apr 25 16:02 id_codeberg_more_private.pub
-rw------- 1 joergi joergi 419 Jul 4 10:49 id_codeberg_private
-rw-r--r-- 1 joergi joergi 107 Jul 4 10:49 id_codeberg_private.pub
-rw------- 1 joergi joergi 2,6K Apr 25 14:00 id_github_rsa
-rw-r--r-- 1 joergi joergi 593 Jun 10 2020 id_github_rsa.pub
-rw------- 1 joergi joergi 411 Apr 25 14:23 id_gitlab
-rw-r--r-- 1 joergi joergi 97 Apr 25 14:23 id_gitlab.pub
Preparing .gitconfig and custom .gitconfig files
Nowadays my .gitconfig looks like this:
[includeIf "gitdir:~/dev/projects/private/github/"]
path = /home/joergi/.gitconfig-github
[includeIf "gitdir:~/dev/projects/work/github/"]
path = /home/joergi/.gitconfig-github
[includeIf "gitdir:~/dev/projects/private/gitlab/"]
path = /home/joergi/.gitconfig-gitlab
[includeIf "gitdir:~/dev/projects/private/codeberg/private"]
path = /home/joergi/.gitconfig-codeberg-private
[includeIf "gitdir:~/dev/projects/private/codeberg/super-private/"]
path = /home/joergi/.gitconfig-codeberg-super-private
As you can already see, we have to define a gitconfig file for each git account.
At the moment I still use the same GitHub config for work and private, I will change that later.
The custom gitconfig files are at the same place as the main .gitconfig file:
/home/joergi/
├─ .gitconfig
├─ .gitconfig-github
├─ .gitconfig-gitlab
├─ .gitconfig-codeberg-private
├─ .gitconfig-codeberg-super-private
This is for example the /home/joergi/.gitconfig-codeberg-private
[user]
email = my-private-codeberg-username@mydomain.de
name = private-username
[core]
autocrlf = input
[init]
defaultBranch = main
the other codeberg config file looks like this:
[user]
email = my-super-private-codeberg-username@mydomain.de
name = more-private-username
[core]
autocrlf = input
[init]
defaultBranch = main
and /home/joergi/.gitconfig-github still looks the same as when I had only one .gitconfig file:
[user]
email = 1234567879+username@users.noreply.github.com
name = joergi
signingkey = ABCDE123456789
[commit]
gpgsign = true
[core]
autocrlf = input
Something I really found out at the end of the configuration journey, that you need to configure everything in the .ssh/config
Host github.com
HostName github.com
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_github_rsa
IdentitiesOnly yes
Host gitlab.com
HostName gitlab.com
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_gitlab
IdentitiesOnly yes
Host codeberg.org
HostName codeberg.org
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_codeberg_private
IdentitiesOnly yes
Host codeberg.org
HostName codeberg.org
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_codeberg_more_private
IdentitiesOnly yes
ToDo: signed commits for all git accounts
As you can see, only the Github account has so far signed commits. This is something I also have to do for my other Git accounts.
Solved problems
If you are on a corporate computer, it can happen that some outgoing ssh connections are blocked. I had to ask our admins to unblock the specific codeberg.org server.
This costed my hours, because github and gitlab were perfectly working and I assumed that I set up something incorrectly in my environment, as codeberg was the only one server where I had 2 different git accounts.
But at the end it was AGAIN the corporate firewall/security setting.
This was really frustrating. So if you have problems, first check if it’s the corporate setting!
Still an unsolved problem
when I create a new repository and I want to commit something, I get the following error message:
Author identity unknown
*** Please tell me who you are.
Run
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
to set your account's default identity.
Omit --global to set the identity only in this repository.
fatal: unable to auto-detect email address (got 'joergi@COMPUTERNAME.(none)')
So it seems that the git doesn’t know the username yet. Before setting the specific repository .git/config, it looks like this:
[core]
repositoryformatversion = 0
filemode = true
bare = false
logallrefupdates = true
[remote "origin"]
url = ssh://git@codeberg.org/private-username/test.git
fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
[branch "main"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/main
So I set the user.email and user.name but without the --global flag
$ git config user.email "my-private-codeberg-username@mydomain.de"
$ git config user.name "private-username"
the ~/dev/projects/joergi/codeberg/private/test/.git/config looks now like this:
[core]
repositoryformatversion = 0
filemode = true
bare = false
logallrefupdates = true
[remote "origin"]
url = ssh://git@codeberg.org/private-username/test.git
fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
[branch "main"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/main
[user]
email = my-private-codeberg-username@mydomain.de
name = private-username
This solves the problem, but it’s a bit annoying, that I have to do this for every new repository. Still looking for a solution.