Connect to Github using SSH keys

Everytime that I use Git to access my repositories, it asks for my username and password. I do a lot pushes, pulls and commits. This has become really annoying. The best way that I found to avoid entering my username and password is to connect to Gitlab using a SSH key. Here are the steps that I did.

Create SSH key

To create SSH key, run the following command.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com" -b 4096

Follow the instructions and enter a passphrase. After you are done, your public key is saved in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. Open that file and copy its content. You will need to paste it in Gitlab.

Add SSH key in Gitlab

1. From Gitlab.com, navigate to your profile Settings > SSH keys.
   
2. Add the SSH key by pasting the content of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file.

Tell Git which private key to use

If ~/.ssh/config doesn't exist, then create it. Then, add the followings:

host gitlab.com
 HostName gitlab.com
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
 User git

Test

Try git clone or git pull origin master.

git clone https://gitlab.com/some-user/example.git
git pull origin master