git-identity

A shell script to quickly switch your Git author identity between two accounts — useful when working across personal and work/university repos on the same machine.

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Problem

Git uses a single global identity (~/.gitconfig) for all repos by default. If you have two accounts — personal and work/university — every commit you make will be authored under the same name and email, regardless of which project you're in.

This causes:

• Work/university commits showing your personal email (or vice versa)
• GitHub contribution graphs attributed to the wrong account
• No easy way to switch without manually running git config every time

Solution

git-identity wraps Git's local config scope into two simple commands. Instead of remembering the git config --local user.email syntax, you run one command per repo once — and Git handles the rest automatically for every commit in that repo.

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Installation (run globally from anywhere)

Copy the script to a directory on your $PATH:

cp git-identity.sh ~/.local/bin/git-identity
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/git-identity

Make sure ~/.local/bin is in your PATH. Add this to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc if it isn't:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Then reload your shell:

source ~/.bashrc   # or source ~/.zshrc

Now you can run git-identity from any directory.

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Configuration

Before using, open the script and set your two identities at the top:

# Global / personal identity (default)
U1_NAME="Your Name"
U1_EMAIL="you@personal.com"

# Local / alternate identity (e.g. work or university)
U2_NAME="Your Name"
U2_EMAIL="you@work.com"

Do not commit the script with real emails. Add it to .gitignore or use placeholder values in a shared version.

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Usage

git-identity [local|global|status]

Command	What it does
git-identity local	Sets this repo's identity to the alternate account (U2)
git-identity global	Clears the local override — falls back to global account (U1)
git-identity status	Shows the effective, local, and global identity for the current repo
git-identity	Shows this help

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How it works

Git resolves identity in this order — the most specific scope wins:

system  (~lowest priority)
  └── global  (~/.gitconfig)
        └── local  (.git/config)  ← wins

• git-identity local writes user.name and user.email into .git/config of the current repo only. No other repo is affected.
• git-identity global removes those local entries, so Git falls back to ~/.gitconfig.

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Examples

# Inside a university project repo
cd ~/projects/uni-assignment
git-identity local    # switch to university email for this repo only

# Check what identity will be used
git-identity status

# Done with the project, reset to personal
git-identity global

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Notes

• Requires bash and git to be installed.
• Must be run from inside a Git repository for local, global, and status commands.
• In detached HEAD state, status will show the short commit SHA as the branch.