🎯 The Problem

Managing multiple Git identities (personal, work, freelance) on the same machine is painful:

• Forgetting to change user.email leads to commits with the wrong identity
• Setting up SSH keys for each account is tedious and error-prone
• Remembering which SSH key to use for which repository is confusing

✨ The Solution

Git SSH CLI automates everything in one command. It:

• 🔑 Generates unique SSH keys for each identity
• 📄 Configures Git to automatically use the correct identity based on project directory
• 🔧 Sets up SSH config for seamless multi-account access

📦 Installation

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 14.0.0
• ssh-keygen (pre-installed on macOS, Linux, and Windows 10+)

Install via npm

npm install -g gitsshcli

Install from Source

git clone https://github.com/madhusudansinghrathore/gitsshcli.git
cd gitsshcli
npm install
npm link

Verify Installation

gitssh --version
# Output: 1.0.0

gitssh --help

🚀 Quick Start

# Run the setup wizard
gitssh setup

# Follow the prompts to add your profiles
# That's it! Your Git and SSH configs are ready

📖 Commands

gitssh setup

Interactive wizard to configure Git profiles and generate SSH keys.

What it does:

1. Collects profile information - Prompts for identity details
2. Generates SSH keys - Creates ED25519 keys for secure authentication
3. Updates SSH config - Adds host aliases for multi-account access
4. Configures Git - Sets up automatic identity switching based on directory

Usage:

gitssh setup

Interactive Prompts:

The wizard prompts for:

| Prompt | Description | Example | |--------|-------------|---------| | Display Identifier | Short name for this profile (used in filenames) | personal, work, freelance | | Full Name | Your name for Git commits | John Doe | | Email | Email address for this identity | [email protected] | | Full Directory Path | Root directory for projects using this identity | ~/work/personal | | Default Branch | Default branch name for new repositories | main, master, development |

Example Session:

🔧 Git SSH CLI Setup

This wizard will help you set up Git configurations and SSH keys for multiple profiles.

📝 Profile 1

? Display Identifier: personal
? Full Name: John Doe
? Email: [email protected]
? Full Directory Path: ~/work/personal
? Default Branch: main

✓ Added profile: personal

? Do you want to add another profile? Yes

📝 Profile 2

? Display Identifier: work
? Full Name: John Doe
? Email: [email protected]  
? Full Directory Path: ~/work/company
? Default Branch: main

✓ Added profile: work

? Do you want to add another profile? No

📋 Profiles to set up:

  1. personal
     Name: John Doe
     Email: [email protected]
     Directory: ~/work/personal
     Branch: main

  2. work
     Name: John Doe
     Email: [email protected]
     Directory: ~/work/company
     Branch: main

? Ready to set up 2 profile(s). This will generate SSH keys and update Git configs. Continue? Yes

Output:

After successful setup:

🔑 Generating SSH keys...

  Generating key for personal...
  ✓ Generated: ~/.ssh/personal
  Generating key for work...
  ✓ Generated: ~/.ssh/work

📄 Updating SSH config...

  ✓ Updated ~/.ssh/config

📄 Updating Git config...

  ✓ Updated ~/.gitconfig with includeIf blocks

📄 Creating profile Git configs...

  ✓ Created ~/.gitconfig-personal
  ✓ Created ~/.gitconfig-work

✅ Setup Complete!

📋 Add these public keys to your GitHub accounts:

personal ([email protected]):
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAI... [email protected]
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

work ([email protected]):
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAI... [email protected]
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

📖 Usage Instructions:

  When cloning repos, use the profile-specific host:
    git clone [email protected]:username/repo.git
    git clone [email protected]:username/repo.git

  To test SSH connection:
    ssh -T [email protected]
    ssh -T [email protected]

📁 Generated Files

After running gitssh setup, the following files are created/updated:

SSH Keys

| File | Description | |------|-------------| | ~/.ssh/<identifier> | Private SSH key (keep secret!) | | ~/.ssh/<identifier>.pub | Public SSH key (add to GitHub) |

SSH Config (~/.ssh/config)

# personal GitHub account
Host github.com-personal
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/personal
    IdentitiesOnly yes

# work GitHub account  
Host github.com-work
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/work
    IdentitiesOnly yes

Git Config (~/.gitconfig)

[includeIf "gitdir:~/work/personal/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig-personal

[includeIf "gitdir:~/work/company/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig-work

Profile Git Configs

~/.gitconfig-personal:

[user]
    name = John Doe
    email = [email protected]

[init]
    defaultBranch = main

~/.gitconfig-work:

[user]
    name = John Doe
    email = [email protected]

[init]
    defaultBranch = main

🔧 How It Works

Automatic Identity Switching

Git's includeIf directive automatically loads different configurations based on the repository's location:

~/work/
├── personal/          ← Uses ~/.gitconfig-personal
│   ├── my-blog/
│   └── side-project/
└── company/           ← Uses ~/.gitconfig-work
    ├── main-app/
    └── internal-tool/

SSH Host Aliases

Instead of using github.com directly, use profile-specific hosts:

# Instead of:
git clone [email protected]:username/repo.git

# Use:
git clone [email protected]:username/repo.git
# or
git clone [email protected]:username/repo.git

This tells SSH which key to use for authentication.

📝 Post-Setup Steps

1. Add SSH Keys to GitHub

For each profile, add the public key to the corresponding GitHub account:

1. Copy the public key from the setup output (or run cat ~/.ssh/<identifier>.pub)
2. Go to GitHub → Settings → SSH and GPG keys
3. Click New SSH key
4. Paste the key and save

2. Test SSH Connections

ssh -T [email protected]
# Hi username! You've successfully authenticated...

ssh -T [email protected]
# Hi username! You've successfully authenticated...

3. Clone Repositories

Use the profile-specific host when cloning:

# Personal projects
cd ~/work/personal
git clone [email protected]:myusername/my-repo.git

# Work projects
cd ~/work/company
git clone [email protected]:company/project.git

4. Update Existing Repositories

For existing repos, update the remote URL:

cd ~/work/personal/existing-repo
git remote set-url origin [email protected]:username/repo.git

❓ FAQ

Can I add more profiles later?

Yes! Just run gitssh setup again. New profiles will be appended to existing configurations.

What if I already have SSH keys?

If a key with the same name exists, the tool will skip generation and reuse the existing key.

Does this work with GitLab/Bitbucket?

Currently configured for GitHub, but you can manually edit ~/.ssh/config to add other providers:

Host gitlab.com-personal
    HostName gitlab.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/personal
    IdentitiesOnly yes

How do I remove a profile?

Manually remove the relevant sections from:

• ~/.ssh/config
• ~/.gitconfig
• Delete ~/.gitconfig-<identifier>
• Optionally delete ~/.ssh/<identifier> and ~/.ssh/<identifier>.pub

🛠️ Development

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/madhusudansinghrathore/gitsshcli.git
cd gitsshcli

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Link for local development
npm link

# Run the CLI
gitssh --help

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

⭐ Show Your Support

If this project helped you, please give it a ⭐ on GitHub!