Git and SSH Notes

Notes, mainly for working on sourcehut. I keep forgetting some of these commands and it’s nice to have a reference.

SSH

Start the SSH process

$ eval "$(ssh-agent -s)" 

Key Location

Typically stored at ~/.ssh/

Create a New Key

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/KEYNAME -C "COMMENT"

Add a Key to Current Session

$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/KEY_NAME

Add a Key to a Remote

For example, to ssh into a web host:

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/KEYNAME.pub USER@DOMAIN.COM

This will ask for the user’s password, so that it can ensure the key is being loaded by the authorized user. DOMAIN.COM can also be an IP address; for example, when setting up a server on a local network.

Git

Pushing a new repo to git.sr.ht

Sourcehut repositories have URLs like:

git@git.sr.ht:~USERNAME/REPOSITORY_NAME

In git, create a new remote:

git remote add SHORT_NAME URL

Create a new repository, add files to it, etc and run git init. Then, push it to the remote:

git push SHORT_NAME BRANCH_NAME 

Don’t forget to set to track the remote branch:

git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/main main

Full example:

eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
ssh-add ~/.ssh/keyname
mkdir sonya
cd sonya 
echo "Diabetes simulator">README.md
git init 
git add --all
git commit -m "initial commit"
git remote add origin git@git.sr.ht:~freestatelabs/sonya
git push origin main
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/main main

Result:

Initialized empty Git repository in ~/sonya/.git/
[main (root-commit) 63caa53] initial commit
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
 create mode 100644 README.md
Enumerating objects: 3, done.
Counting objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 229 bytes | 229.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
remote: 
remote:         NOTICE
remote: 
remote:         You have pushed to a repository which did not exist. ~freestatelabs/sonya
remote:         has been created automatically. You can re-configure or delete this
remote:         repository at the following URL:
remote: 
remote:         https://git.sr.ht/~freestatelabs/sonya/settings/info
remote: 
remote: Default branch updated to main
To git.sr.ht:~freestatelabs/sonya
 * [new branch]      main -> main
branch 'main' set up to track 'origin/main'.

Current local branch has no upstream branch

Git does warn you of this and tell you how to fix it.

You’ve made a new branch and want to send it to the remote host.

 git push --set-upstream origin BRANCH_NAME

Git Submodules

From the project root where the dependency should be added:

git submodule add DEPENDENCY_URL DEPENDENCY_PATH

For example:

git submodule add https://git.sr.ht/~freestatelabs/shepherd vendor/shepherd

Note that there are special processes for handling git submodules; it sounds like they work best when the dependency is updated infrequently. See Git docs and Atlassian docs.

Change User Name or Email

git config user.name "FIRST LAST" 
git config user.email "EMAIL@DOMAIN.COM"
cat .git/config       # to check