From Chaos to Control: Using Direnv to Manage Multiple GitHub Accounts
The Big Problem
Imagine you have two GitHub accounts: one for personal use and one for work. You might be working on personal projects from your work laptop, but switching between these projects often requires manually updating your GitHub configuration:
git config user.name <your-user-name>
git config user.email <your-email>
Forgetting to switch these settings can lead to issues, such as accidentally committing company code with your personal GitHub account or exposing your company email in open-source projects. This can create confusion and potential privacy concerns.
How to manage multiple github accounts in your laptop
Add this to ~/.ssh/config
Host *
addkeystoagent yes
identitiesonly yes
include config.d/*
Host github.com
HostName github.com
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
IdentitiesOnly yes
The line include config.d/* imports all the ssh configurations from config.d directory
Add this to ~/.ssh/config.d/personal
Host github.com-personal
HostName github.com
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_personal
IdentitiesOnly yes
This is how your ~/.ssh directory structure will look like
themythicalengineer@fedora:~/.ssh$ tree
.
├── config
├── config.d
│ └── personal
├── id_ed25519 # company key
├── id_ed25519.pub
├── id_ed25519_personal # personal key
├── id_ed25519_personal.pub
How to clone repositories for different github accounts using ssh
To fetch company account repositories
git clone git@github.com:<company>/<repo-name>.git
To fetch personal account repositories
git clone git@github.com-personal:<username>/<repo-name>.git
Now that we’ve set up both GitHub accounts, the next step is to seamlessly switch between them.
Create Separate directories
The first step is to keep your company and personal projects in separate directories.
themythicalengineer@fedora:~/$ tree
.
├── personal
├── company
Install direnv
Please check Official instructions
Create direnv configurations in personal and company directories
cd personal
touch .envrc
touch .gitconfig
direnv allow
Allow direnv in this directory
direnv allow
Add this to .envrc
export GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL=$(pwd)/.gitconfig
Add this to .gitconfig
[user]
name = <your-personal-github-username>
email = <your-personal-email>
You can set your global Git configuration to use your company username, or you can configure your company-specific settings directly within the project directory.
Whenever you switch to this directory, you’ll see the direnv configuration automatically applied.
direnv: loading ~/personal/.envrc
direnv: export +GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL
When you navigate out of this directory, you’ll receive a log indicating that the configuration has reverted to its previous state.
direnv: unloading
Now you never have to manually change your GitHub username when switching between personal and work projects.
Cheers!
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