How to change git ssh user for a remote push temporarily?

Question

Is it possible to change the ssh user temporarly for a \"git push remote master\" without messing up with .git/config or \"git remote\", or using the whole remote url?

Answer 1

The ssh address registered with git remote probably already include the user name, so you would need to use a complete ssh url like:

otheruser@remote:arepo

That won't work, because ssh will use the default public/private keys (currently used by the first user for authentication).

You can register a new remote in your local config:

# use the current ssh address registered for origin, changing just the user
# but you need a config file
git remote add originOtheruser otheruser:arepo

You must have a $HOME/.ssh/config file, in order to define the ssh entry 'otheruser', because ssh needs to know what public/private key it needs to use: it cannot be the default ones ($HOME/.ssh/id_rsa and $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)

See for instance "how to add deploy key for 2 repo with 1 user on github"

Host otheruser
HostName remote
User otheruser
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/otheruser

That supposes you have stored the public/private keys for otheruser as:

$HOME/.ssh/otheruser
$HOME/.ssh/otheruser.pub

Now, you can use that new remote to push:

git push originOtheruser master