Developing with multiple GitHub accounts on one MacBook

GitHub Kage Bunshin-no-jutsu

I have two github accounts now. https://github.com/ibrahimlawal and https://github.com/ibrahimlawal-paystack. Both are very active accounts. This post outlines how I setup my MacBook for easy git usage.

I am using a third, nonexistent account in the samples to show that this can be extended to more than 2 accounts.

Create SSH keys for all accounts

First make sure your current directory is your .ssh folder.

$ cd ~/.ssh
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "my@pers.on.al" -f "github-ibrahimlawal"
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "my@wo.rk" -f "github-ibrahimlawal-paystack"
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "moi@pl.ay" -f "github-ibraheemweynodey"

The -C option is a comment to help identify the key.

The -f option specifies the file name for the key pair.

You can choose how to name the key pair. I followed the recommendation here and used github-{GitHub username}.

You’ll now have a public and private key in your ~/.ssh/ folder.

Add the SSH keys to your SSH-agent

Your keys are now created but won’t be used until they are added to the agent. Let’s add them.

$ ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/github-ibrahimlawal
$ ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/github-ibrahimlawal-paystack
$ ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/github-ibraheemweynodey

You only need the --apple-use-keychain option on a mac. More details on adding keys to the SSH agent here.

Import all the public keys on the corresponding GitHub accounts

You can quickly copy each key to the clipboard with the commands below. After each copy,

• Visit here while logged in to the corresponding GitHub account;
• Click the ‘New SSH key’ button and paste the public key from clipboard.

$ pbcopy < ~/.ssh/github-ibrahimlawal.pub
$ pbcopy < ~/.ssh/github-ibrahimlawal-paystack.pub
$ pbcopy < ~/.ssh/github-ibrahimweynodey.pub

Create GitHub host entries for all accounts

The ~/.ssh/config file allows you specify a lot of config options for SSH. The commands below create the file if it doesn’t exist. And opens it in your default editing command… Likely TextEdit.

$ open -e ~/.ssh/config

Add these lines to the file, each block corresponding to each account you created earlier.

#ibrahimlawal account
Host github.com-ibrahimlawal
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github-ibrahimlawal
#ibrahimlawal-paystack account
Host github.com-ibrahimlawal-paystack
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github-ibrahimlawal-paystack
#ibraheemweynodey account
Host github.com-ibraheemweynodey
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github-ibraheemweynodey

What account should be default?

Make it the global:

$ git config --global user.name "ibrahimlawal"
$ git config --global user.email "my@pers.on.al"

This will be used by default.

Cloning GitHub repositories using secondary accounts

For those that are not yet cloned,

• Go to the root folder of the repository.
• Use the format below to craft the clone command

$ git clone git@github.com-{your-username}:{the-repo-organisation-or-owner-user-name}/{the-repo-name}.git
[e.g. $] git clone git@github.com-ibrahimweynodey:n/n.git

Updating remote for repositories already cloned

Changing the user for repositories already cloned should also take only 3 steps:

$ git remote set-url origin git@github.com-{your-username}:{the-repo-organisation-or-owner-user-name}/{the-repo-name}.git
[e.g. $] git remote set-url origin git@github.com-ibrahimweynodey:n/n.git

Finally…

From now on, to ensure that your commits and pushes from each repository on the system uses the correct GitHub user — especially in case it is not to be the default — you will have to do the following in every repository. Freshly cloned or existing before the need to have multiple accounts on a system. Just pick the correct pair. Running all will only mean all repositories will be committed with the play account!

$ git config user.email "my@pers.on.al"
$ git config user.name "Ibrahim Lawal"
$ git config user.email "my@wo.rk"
$ git config user.name "Ibrahim Lawal"
$ git config user.email "my@pl.ay"
$ git config user.name "Ibrahim wey no dey"

Any Questions?