CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitsshgitlab
Cerin
Cerin

Reputation: 64880

How to set git config to use specific key for domain?

How do you make a rule in your ~/.gitconfig to tell git to use a specific SSH key for a specific project?

I have separate personal and professional accounts on Gitlab, and I want to use my personal SSH key when committing to most of my Gitlab repos, but I want to specify a separate key when committing to my professional Gitlab repos. Aside from keeping things neat and tidy, this is also required from a technical standpoint as Gitlab doesn't let you share SSH keys between two accounts.

Searching for this situation, I found numerous solutions, such as appending this to my ~/.gitconfig:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/git/my_professional_project/"]
    [user]
        email = "[email protected]"
    [core]
        sshCommand = "ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_myuser_at_domain.pub"

In theory, this tells git that, whenever making commits inside the directory ~/git/my_professional_project/ to push commits via SSH with the key ~/.ssh/id_rsa_myuser_at_domain.pub.

And I found this did indeed allow git to commit to my professional account. However, despite the "IncludeIf" statement, I found the side-effect of this was that it also made git use my professional key for all git commits, resulting in the notorious error:

You are not allowed to push code to this project.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

Is there a mistake in my includeIf rule syntax? Why does this configuration force git to use the wrong SSH key?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1833

Answers (2)

torek
torek

Reputation: 489858

The includeIf directive / section uses only one field, named path:

[includeIf "expression"]
    path = /path/to/file

You cannot add core and user sections in this file. You must put the [core] and [user] directives in another configuration file. You then use the includeIf directive (your existing condition is fine) with path to tell Git where to find the other file.

Upvotes: 2

bk2204
bk2204

Reputation: 76964

Your includeIf syntax is indeed incorrect. What you've written is an includeIf section with no configuration settings, then a user section with an email setting, and then a core section with an sshCommand setting, albeit with some odd indenting.

If you want to use an includeIf section, you need to place the additional options in a separate file, and include that:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/git/my_professional_project/"]
    path = ~/.config/git/professional

Upvotes: 3

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