Use many different Git accounts automatically

June 05, 2026

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Edit This Article was published in July 2025
But I had the problem that it was not 100% working to use 2 codeberg accounts, there was always some manual work, when using it.
This is now completely fixed. Happy me! I’m happy if you can give me feedback via Mastodon

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

Edit: it’s super important that the includeIf ends with a /. Else it will not work. With /** it will match all repos underneath. That’s exactly what I want!

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

Edit In the beginning I had the code written like this for each codeberg one (only showing one for simplicity)

Host codeberg.org
    HostName codeberg.org
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_codeberg_private
    IdentitiesOnly yes

Edit** But that was the error. The only thing needed is:

Host codeberg.org
    HostName codeberg.org
    User git

Edit no identity file, nothing!

Something I really found out at the end of the configuration journey, that you need to configure everything in the .ssh/config

Edit so this is the update one .ssh/config file:

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

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!

Edit The problem with the not knowing which git user it should use for codeberg is with the new edit above solved, hurray.

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.