What is it?

Each time you create or clone a Git repository, you need to configure the user.name and user.email (and SSH for private repos).

I often forget to do this, and sometimes I don’t remember my no-reply email address. Here’s a solution.

With profile configurations, you can control the necessary settings for each workspace (directory).

Git profile

Create a separate file with specific configurations for the profile. Here I create it at ~/.config/git/personal.config. Do replace with yours.

[user]
  email = 41385034+fixthebug@users.noreply.github.com
  name = fixthebug
[core]
  sshCommand="ssh -i ~/.ssh/personal"

The sshCommand profile provides the SSH key for private repositories. You can use this in combination with git ssh config to pull and push code seamlessly.

Setup profiles in .gitconfig

Append these lines at the end of your ~/.gitconfig

[include]
 path = "~/.config/git/personal.config"
[includeIf "gitdir:~/work1/"]
 path = "~/.config/git/work1.config"
[includeIf "gitdir:~/work2/"]
 path = "~/.config/git/work2.config"

Explain:

  • The first include tells Git to apply the personal profile for every path. This is considered the default profile.
  • The includeIf directives tells git to apply the work1.config for every path under ~/work1/, and work2.config for subfolders of ~/work2/

Sign commits

To sign commits, you can add the following lines to the profile configuration. (Or run git config --global commit.gpgSign true to enable it globally.)

[user]
  email = 41385034+fixthebug@users.noreply.github.com
  name = fixthebug
  signingkey = ~/.ssh/personal
[core]
  sshCommand="ssh -i ~/.ssh/personal"
[gpg]
  format = ssh
[commit]
  gpgsign = true

On github, add new ssh public key with key type “Signing key”

Conclusion

That’s it! Now, each time you create or clone a new project. Git will automatically determine the correct profile for you! 😎

result

Reference