Git Use Multiple Users

In some cases, we work between our personal projects and work projects, so we need to use different user across multiple projects. As we all known, git provides a way to set up user individually in the .git/config file in the project root dir. But actually, I always forget to set up the user in the new project before I commit my changes. This annoyed me for a long time.

So I found a way to auto toggle the user in git. We can use the [includeIf] to include different config files in the ~/.gitconfig file. This is a feature named “conditional includes” in git.

The following is my ~/.gitconfig file:

[user]
[includeIf "gitdir:~/Work/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig.work
[includeIf "gitdir:~/Personal/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig.personal

And the following is my ~/.gitconfig.work file:

[user]
    name = work
    email = work@company.com

And the following is my ~/.gitconfig.personal file:

[user]
    name = personal
    email = personal@me.com

The [includeIf] will include the config file in the path if the gitdir matches the current project root dir. In the ~/Work dir my commit user will be work, and in the ~/Personal dir my commit user will be personal. So we can use different user in different projects. But remember remove the [user] section in the .git/config file in the project root dir, because it have higher priority.

It’s very useful for me. Hope it can help you too.