SSH key management with small bash script function

Managing SSH keys for secure access to Git repositories can be a daunting task, especially if you work on multiple accounts hosted on a same platform like Gitlab or Github.

How to use?

If that’s your case, this script maybe for you, just paste it to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc. I didn’t test with fish tho.

Then running git-change to select one SSH for your git project.

function git-change() {
  if [ $ZSH_VERSION ]; then
    setopt sh_word_split
  fi
  IFS=$'\n' keys=$(ls -1 ~/.ssh/id_rsa ~/.ssh/*/id_rsa ~/.ssh/id_rsa_* 2> /dev/null)

  select item in $keys
  do
    echo "export GIT_SSH_COMMAND=\"ssh -i $item -o IdentitiesOnly=yes\""
    export GIT_SSH_COMMAND="ssh -i $item -o IdentitiesOnly=yes"
    break
  done
}

How it works?

• This small script list available SSH keys by searching for files named “id_rsa” in ~/.ssh, as well as its subdirectories.
• By default, script searches with this command: ls -1 ~/.ssh/id_rsa ~/.ssh/*/id_rsa ~/.ssh/id_rsa_*, feel free to customize it for your use case.
• After you select the script, git-change function sets the GIT_SSH_COMMAND environment variable with the appropriate SSH command, including the chosen SSH key.

Happy coding (⌐□_□)