Maintain Multiple Git Identities

If you like me use git for both work and play. It is nice to be able to separate Git identities.

Normally you would have something along the lines of:

# ~/.gitconfig

[user]
    name = <first name> <last name>
    email = <private email address>

With release 2.13 of Git you can do conditional includes, which enables you to do:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/develop/git-work/"]
    path = .gitconfig-work

So insert the above snippet into: ~/.gitconfig and create the file: ~/.gitconfig-work, just name stuff to match your preferences.

# ~/.gitconfig-work

[user]
    name = <first name> <last name>
    email = <work email address>

Do note the order of things, so [user] should be before the overwrite specified by the conditional.

# ~/.gitconfig

[user]
    name = <first name> <last name>
    email = <private email address>
[includeIf "gitdir:~/develop/git-work/"]
    path = .gitconfig-work

After this you should be able to observe:

$ cd ~/dev/justcurious
$ git config user.email
<private email address>

$ cd ~/develop/git-work/projectA
$ git config user.email
<work email address>

You can then specify all the conditional includes you want. My conditional includes configuration ~/.gitconfig looks like:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/develop/git-work/"]
    path = .gitconfig-work
[includeIf "gitdir:~/develop/gitlab-work/"]
    path = .gitconfig-work
[includeIf "gitdir:~/develop/github-work/"]
    path = .gitconfig-work

You should of course set the default to your primary/dominant repositories and then overwrite for the special repositories.

NB! the last back-slash (/) is important, leaving it out can cause issues, meaning the proper configuration is not active. Alternatively you can add asterisks (*).

[includeIf "gitdir:~/develop/git-work/**"]
    path = .gitconfig-work
[includeIf "gitdir:~/develop/gitlab-work/**"]
    path = .gitconfig-work
[includeIf "gitdir:~/develop/github-work/**"]
    path = .gitconfig-work

This information was retrieved from the blog post: “Juggling Multiple Git Identities” by Benny Cornelissen.

Inspecting if things work can be done using the git command.

Check a single value:

$ git config user.username
jonasbn

And for all values (some left out for brevity and due to sensitivity):

$ git config --list
user.name=jonasbn
alias.lsch=!f() { git diff --name-status -r HEAD~$1; }; f
alias.a=add
alias.b=branch
alias.c=commit --message
alias.ca=commit --all --message
alias.cl=clone
...

I want to check where a given values originates from I can get that using: --show-origin

$ git config --show-origin user.name
file:/home/jonasbn/.gitconfig-work   jonasbn

And of course you can do it for all parameters at once (some left out for brevity and due to sensitivity):

.git config --list --show-origin
file:/home/jonasbn/.gitconfig-work   jonasbn
file:.git/config        core.repositoryformatversion=0

References

• Blog post: “Maintaining Different Git Identities” by Max Kleucker, @mkleucker
• Git documentation on conditional includes
• My dotfiles repository
• Blog post: “Juggling Multiple Git Identities” by Benny Cornelissen
• Git documentation: “First-Time Git Setup”