git repo use this key

I learned a new git trick a few weeks ago. I wanted a local git folder to use a specific ssh key to connect to the remote git repository. This particular server is hosting a few different repos and they each have their own relevant deploy key in use.

I have those keys in my .ssh folder, but I had been using a horrible hack of setting the git command as a shell environment variable before any git instructions, like so:

GIT_SSH_COMMAND="ssh -i ~/.ssh/my-private-deploy-key" git ...

It was annoying and broke easily. I just wanted to set the setting somewhere so I could go about my git life and not worry about it. Enter core.sshCommand!

Here’s what you do:

git config core.sshCommand "ssh -i ~/.ssh/my-private-deploy-key -F /dev/null"

That’s it. The info is stored in .git/config. It’s safe in your local environment and doesn’t break anything for anyone else.