Shorten Git SSH URL

30 Dec 2021 - Tyler

I set up my VPS to act as a remote Git repository so that I can store things on there as well as on GitHub. In doing so I realised though that the URL can get a bit unruly. When I wanted to add a remote to one of my local repositories I had to use:

$ git remote add remotename ssh://user@10.10.10.10:8910/path/to/your/git/repo.git

Its not so bad, but of course we are lazy efficient. Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of ssh://user@10.10.10.10:8910/path/to/your/git/repo.git you could just use yourserver://repo.git? Of course like most things in the developer world this is possible, I’ll show you how.

All we need to do is open up your .gitconfig and add a couple lines.

[url "ssh://user@10.10.10.10:8910/path/to/your/git/"]
        insteadOf = yourserver://

Of course, in this example replace:

Alternatively you can use the git cmd to do it as well:

$ git config --global url."ssh://user@10.10.10.10:8910/path/to/your/git/".insteadOf yourserver://

Now, after you’ve added the blank git repository on your server, all you need to do from the project root is:

$ git remote add remotename yourserver://repo.git

Quite a bit easier, eh?

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