Can I specify multiple users for myself in .gitconfig?

Question

In my ~/.gitconfig, I list my personal email address under [user], since that\'s what I want to use for Github repos.

But, I\'ve recently s

Answer 1

There is a simple solution that seems to work well for avoiding mistakes.

Simply remove the [user] section from your ~/.gitconfig, which will prevent you from making any commits without setting user.name for each repository.

In your ~/.bashrc, add some simple aliases for the user and email:

alias ggmail='git config user.name "My Name";git config user.email me@gmail.com'
alias gwork='git config user.name "My Name";git config user.email me@work.job'

Answer 2

Another option to get git to work with multiple names / emails is by aliasing git and using the -c flag to override the global and repository-specific config.

For example, by defining an alias:

alias git='/usr/bin/git -c user.name="Your name" -c user.email="name@example.com"'

To see whether it works, simply type git config user.email:

$ git config user.email
name@example.com

Instead of an alias, you could also put a custom git executable within your $PATH.

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/git -c user.name="Your name" -c user.email="name@example.com" "$@"

An advantage of these method over a repository-specific .git/config is that it applies to every git repository when the custom git program is active. In this way, you can easily switch between users/names without modifying any (shared) configuration.

Answer 3

GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL + local .bashrc

.bashrc_local: don't track this file, put it only on your work computer:

export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL='me@work.com'
export GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="$GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL"

.bashrc: track this file, make it the same on both work and home computers:

F="$HOME/.bashrc_local"
if [ -r "$F" ]; then
    . "$F"
fi

I'm using https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick to sync my dotfiles.

If only gitconfig would accept environment variables: Shell variable expansion in git config

Answer 4

Just add this to your ~/.bash_profile to switch between default keys for github.com

# Git SSH keys swap
alias work_git="ssh-add -D  && ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa_work"
alias personal_git="ssh-add -D && ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa"

Answer 5

With conditional includes in Git 2.13, it is now possible to have multiple user/email coexist on one machine with little work.

user.gitconfig has my personal name and email. work-user.gitconfig has my work name and email. Both files are at ~ path.

So my personal name/email applies by default. For c:/work/ dir, my work name/email is applied. For c:/work/github/ dir, my personal name/email is applied. This works as the last setting gets applied.

# ~/.gitconfig
[include]
    path = user.gitconfig
[includeIf "gitdir/i:c:/work/"]
    path = work-user.gitconfig
[includeIf "gitdir/i:c:/work/github/"]
    path = user.gitconfig

gitdir is case-sensitive and gitdir/i is case-insensitive.

"gitdir/i:github/" would apply the conditional include for any directory with github in its path.

Answer 6

Windows Environment

Additional this can be modified from Git Extensions --> Settings --> Global Settings, if you have it installed in your systems.

gitextensions-latest-release

Right Click on a folder/directory in Windows Environment to access these settings.

Update : How to switch/maintain multiple settings in Version 2.49