How to tell git to use the correct identity name and email for a given project

Question

I use my personal laptop for both work and personal projects and I would like to use my work email address for my commits at work  gitolite  and my personal email address for the rest  github    I read about the following solutions which are all either global or temporary    git config --global user email  bob example com  git config user email  bob example com  git commit --author  Bob  lt bob example com gt   setting one of the GIT AUTHOR EMAIL  GIT COMMITTER EMAIL or EMAIL environment variables   One solution is to run manually a shell function that sets my environment to work or personal  but I am pretty sure that I will often forget to switch to the correct identity resulting in committing under the wrong identity   Is there a way of binding a certain repository  project name  etc  to an identity  name  email   What do people do

User · Answer

I very like the way of Micah Henning in his article (see Setting Up Git Identities) on this subject. The fact that he apply and force the identity to each repository created/cloned is a good way not to forget to set this up each time.

Basic git configuration

Unset current user config in git:

$ git config --global --unset user.name
$ git config --global --unset user.email
$ git config --global --unset user.signingkey

Force identity configuration on each new local repository:

$ git config --global user.useConfigOnly true

Create Git alias for identity command, we will use later:

$ git config --global alias.identity '! git config user.name "$(git config user.$1.name)"; git config user.email "$(git config user.$1.email)"; git config user.signingkey "$(git config user.$1.signingkey)"; :'

Identities creation

Create an identity with GPG (use gpg or gpg2 depending on what you got on your system). Repeat next steps for each identities you want to use.

Note: [keyid] here is the identifier of created secret key. Example here:
sec   rsa4096/8A5C011E4CE081A5 2020-06-09 [SC] [expires: 2021-06-09]
      CCC470AE787C057557F421488C4C951E4CE081A5
uid                 [ultimate] Your Name <youremail@domain>
ssb   rsa4096/1EA965889861C1C0 2020-06-09 [E] [expires: 2021-06-09]
The 8A5C011E4CE081A5 part after sec rsa4096/ is the identifier of key.

$ gpg --full-gen-key
$ gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG <youremail@domain>
$ gpg --armor --export [keyid]

Copy the public key block and add it to your GitHub/GitProviderOfChoice settings as a GPG key.

Add identity to Git config. Also repeat this for each identity you want to add:

Note: here I use gitlab to name my identity, but from your question it can be anything, ex: gitolite or github, work, etc.

$ git config --global user.gitlab.name "Your Name"
$ git config --global user.gitlab.email "youremail@domain"
$ git config --global user.gitlab.signingkey [keyid]

Setup identity for a repository

If a new repo has no identity associated, an error will appear on commit, reminding you to set it.

*** Please tell me who you are.

## parts of message skipped ##

fatal: no email was given and auto-detection is disabled

Specify the identity you want on a new repository:

$ git identity gitlab

You're now ready to commit with the gitlab identity.

User · Answer

You need to use the local set command below   local set  git config user email mahmoud company ccc git config user name  Mahmoud Zalt    local get  git config --get user email git config --get user name   The local config file is in the project directory   git config   global set  git config --global user email mahmoud zalt me git config --global user name  Mahmoud Zalt    global get  git config --global --get user email git config --global --get user name   The global config file in in your home directory     gitconfig   Remember to quote blanks  etc  for example   FirstName LastName

User · Answer

Edit the config file with in  quot  git quot  folder to maintain the different username and email depends upon the repository  Go to Your repository Show the hidden files and go to  quot  git quot  folder Find the  quot config quot  file Add the below lines at EOF    user  name   Bob email   bob example com  This below command show you which username and email set for this repository   git config --get user name git config --get user email  Example  for mine that config file in D  workspace eclipse ipchat  git config Here ipchat is my repo name

User · Answer

One solution is to run manually a shell function that sets my environment to work or personal  but I am pretty sure that I will often forget to switch to the correct identity resulting in committing under the wrong identity    That was exactly my problem  I have written a hook script which warns you if you have any github remote and not defined a local username   Here s how you set it up    Create a directory to hold the global hook  mkdir -p    git-templates hooks Tell git to copy everything in    git-templates to your per-project  git directory when you run git init or clone  git config --global init templatedir     git-templates  And now copy the following lines to    git-templates hooks pre-commit and make the file executable  don t forget this otherwise git won t execute it        bin bash  RED   033 0 31m    red color NC   033 0m    no color  GITHUB REMOTE   git remote -v   grep github com  LOCAL USERNAME   git config --local user name   if   -n   GITHUB REMOTE     amp  amp    -z   LOCAL USERNAME     then     printf   n  RED ATTENTION  At least one Github remote repository is configured  but no local username        printf  Please define a local username that matches your Github account   NC   pre-commit hook  n n      exit 1 fi   If you use other hosts for your private repositories you have to replace github com according to your needs   Now every time you do a git init or git clone git will copy this script to the repository and executes it before any commit is done  If you have not set a local username it will output a warning and won t let you commit

User · Answer

git config user email  bob example com   Doing that one inside a repo will set the configuration on THAT repo  and not globally   Seems like that s pretty much what you re after  unless I m misreading you

User · Answer

As of Git 2 13 you can use an includeIf in your gitconfig to include a file with a different configuration based on the path of the repository where you are running your git commands   Since a new enough Git comes with Ubuntu 18 04 I ve been using this in my    gitconfig quite happily    include    path      gitconfig alias   I like to keep global aliases separate   path      gitconfig defaultusername   can maybe leave values unset empty to get warned if a below path didn t match   If using multiple identities can use per path user email   The trailing   is VERY important  git won t apply the config to subdirectories without it  includeIf  gitdir   projects azure      path      gitconfig azure   user name and user email for Azure  includeIf  gitdir   projects gitlab      path      gitconfig gitlab   user name and user email for GitLab  includeIf  gitdir   projects foss      path      gitconfig github   user name and user email for GitHub   https   motowilliams com conditional-includes-for-git-config disqus thread  To use Git 2 13 you will either need to add a PPA  Ubuntu older than 18 04 Debian  or download the binaries and install  Windows other Linux

User · Answer

If you don t use the --global parameter it will set the variables for the current project only

User · Answer

If you use git config user email  foo example com  it will be bound to the current project you are in   That is what I do for my projects   I set the appropriate identity when I clone init the repo   It is not fool-proof  if you forget and push before you figure it out you are hosed  but it is about as good as you can get without the ability to say git config --global user email  ILLEGAL VALUE   Actually  you can make an illegal value   Set your git config --global user name   perl -e  print  x x968     Then if you forget to set your non-global values you will get an error message    EDIT  On a different system I had to increase the number of x to 968 to get it to fail with  fatal  Impossibly long personal identifier    Same version of git   Strange

[git] How to tell git to use the correct identity (name and email) for a given project?

Basic git configuration

Identities creation

Setup identity for a repository

Examples related to git

Examples related to github

Examples related to gitolite

Examples related to git-config