Manage Multiple Github Repositories on Mac

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Preface:

I recently switch from bluehost to hostgator because my bluehost account is expired after using it for three years. Its renewal price is $250, but creating a hostgator account is only for about $170. Another thing is I am not going to recover the old posts since I haven’t updated them for a long time, but from now on, I will keep updating this blog.

Start:

Let’s assume we have two repositories in our github account:

  1. git@github.com:james/one.git
  2. git@github.com:james/two.git

We need to create SSH keys for our repositories:

  1. $ ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa.github.james.one
  2. $ ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa.github.james.two

Then, it will ask us if we want to set the password for our keys; press enter means no password. After this step, we will get the public key and private key.

Using unix copy commend pbcopy < id_rsa.github.james.one.pub to copy the public key, then add and paste it into our repository one’s deploy key. Do the same thing to repository two as repository one.

In local $ ~/.ssh/, we do $ touch config. In the config file, we add the following:

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# account for the one repo
Host github.com-one
    HostName github.com
    User James
    IdentitiesOnly yes
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa.github.James.one

# account for the two repo
Host github.com-two
    HostName github.com
    User James
    IdentitiesOnly yes
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa.github.James.two

Note: normally, original git url is: git@github.com:James/one.git, after we setup the config file, now it becomes: git@github.com-one:James/one.git.

When we clone these two repositories into one single folder, inside folder, we need to check if there are keys by using $ ssh-add -l If there are keys, we need to delete them by using $ ssh-add -D.

Clone the repository one using $ git clone git@github-one.com:James/one.git, similarlly, we clone repository two using $ git clone git@github.com-two:James/two.git.

Important: we need to do step 4 inside these two repositories folders. And in the corresponding folder (repositories), we add our private keys. For example, in repository one, we do $ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa.github.James.one.

Source: Using Multiple SSH Keys with Github