Authenticating to git with a non-standard SSH key

Normally git uses your default keys for authentication – ~/.ssh/id_rsa or whatever. Sometimes though, you want to use some other key pair. The fix is simple, but not obviously documented in the few places I looked, so here you go:

Let’s say you would typically use something like this:

# git remote add origin git@git.foo.com:bar/baz.git

But you want to use ~/.ssh/my_other_key to authenticate.

In ~/.ssh/config add a block like this:

Host git-foo-com-other-key
  HostName git.foo.com
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/my_other_key

Then, instead of the above git-remote, use this:

# git remote add origin git@git-foo-com-other-key:bar/baz.git

Now, git push origin will use the appropriate key (the corresponding public key is known to git.foo.com, right?)

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