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Git Multiple Repo

If your codebase is too large to maintain in a single Git repository, you should use multiple repositories.

Pre-requisites​

  • Public SSH keys (id_ecdsa.pub / id_rsa.pub / id_ed25519.pub , etc.) are present in your GitHub and GitLab profiles
  • Private SSH keys (id_ecdsa / id_rsa / id_ed25519 , etc.) are added and persisted in your OS's keychain
  • SSH config file has keys specified for GitHub and GitLab:
.ssh/config
  Host github.com
    Hostname github.com
    AddKeysToAgent yes
    UseKeychain yes
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa

  Host gitlab.com
    Hostname gitlab.com
    AddKeysToAgent yes
    UseKeychain yes
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Or

.ssh/config
Host github.com-user
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile /home/user/.ssh/id_ed25519
Host gitlab.com
    PreferredAuthentications publickey
    IdentityFile /home/user/.ssh/id_ed25519_2
  • Initialize git in a directory:

git init

  • Connect git to one remote repository (located in GitHub)
git remote add origin [email protected]:your-username/your-repo.git
  • Rename .git to something like .github
mv .git .github
  • Initialize git again
git init
  • Connect git to the other remote repository (located in GitLab)
git remote add origin [email protected]:your-username/your-repo.git
  • Rename .git to something like .gitlab
mv .git .gitlab
  • Verify that current directory is connected to two different remote repositories
git --git-dir=.github remote -v
  • Pull remote (GitHub and GitLab) repositories
git --git-dir=.github pull origin main
  • Add a file to both repositories
git --git-dir=.github add README.md
  • Write commit message
git --git-dir=.github commit -m "operational overview"
  • Push to remote
git --git-dir=.gitlab push -u origin main

The only additional thing we're doing here is using the --git-dir flag.

If you plan on doing this frequently you could add an alias in your shell config file (like .zprofile, bashrc, etc.):

export github="git --git-dir=.github"

Future operations like pull, push, add, commit can be performed like - github pull origin main , gitlab pull origin main, etc.