How to manage multiple identities for remote git repositories using multiple SSH keys

Intro

In this post I will show you how to manage multiple identities targeting a single remote repository provider. I'll be using GitHub in this post but this can most likely be applied to other providers.

Generate SSH key(s)

Go read some documentation

Update ~/.ssh/config

It should look something like this

# main
Host github.com
    HostName github.com
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/<main_identity_file>
    IdentitiesOnly yes

# alternative
Host alt
    HostName github.com
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/<alternative_identity_file>
    IdentitiesOnly yes

The idea here is that we define another host which can be used to point to a specific SSH key

Using the new key

Cloning via SSH

Syntax for cloning with SSH looks something like
git clone git@<HOST>:<PATH_TO_REPO>.git

GitHub will give you the following to use
git clone [email protected]:<PATH_TO_REPO>.git

Just replace the github.com with the host that you defined in your config.

So in our case it would be
git clone git@alt:<PATH_TO_REPO>.git

New repo

You would just do the same as above when you define the remote path.

Making commits

Make sure to update your git config to use the email associated with your GitHub account. To get the noreply email you can go to Settings > Emails.