Two git repositories in one directory?

If I understand what you're doing, you can handle it all in one repository, using separate branches for each machine, and a branch containing your common home directory config files.

Initialize the repo and commit the common files to it, perhaps renaming the MASTER branch as Common. Then create a separate branch from there for each machine that you work with, and commit machine-specific files into that branch. Any time that you change your common files, merge the common branch into each of the machine branches and push to your other machines (write a script for that if there are many).

Then on each machine, checkout that machine's branch, which will also include the common config files.

Have a look at git submodule.

Submodules allow foreign repositories to be embedded within a dedicated subdirectory of the source tree, always pointed at a particular commit.

RichiH wrote a tool called vcsh which a tool to manage dotfiles using git's fake bare repos to put more than one working directory into $HOME. Nothing to do with csh AFAIK.

However, if you did have multiple directories, an alternative to git-submodules (which are a pain in the best of circumstances and this example usage is not the best of circumstances) is gitslave which leaves the slave repos checked out on the tip of a branch at all times and doesn't required the three step process to make a change in the subsidiary repo (checkout onto the correct branch, make & commit the change, then go into the superproject and commit the new submodule commit).

Yeah, submodules are probably what you want. Another option would be to have your working copy in a subdirectory and then point symlinks from you home directory to the files of interest.

Yes, it is possible to have two git repositories in one directory.

I'm assuming that one remote repository is in GitHub and the other in GitLab. I'm also using two different SSH keys to connect to these remote repositories.

You can have both remote repositories in one of GitHub / GitLab (and use a single SSH key) - not much would change.

Pre-requisites:

• Public SSH keys (id_ecdsa.pub / id_rsa.pub / id_ed25519.pub , etc.) are present in your GitHub and GitLab profiles

• Private SSH keys (id_ecdsa / id_rsa / id_ed25519 , etc.) are added and persisted in your OS's keychain

• SSH config file has keys specified for GitHub and GitLab:

  Host github.com
    Hostname github.com
    AddKeysToAgent yes
    UseKeychain yes
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa
  
  Host gitlab.com
    Hostname gitlab.com
    AddKeysToAgent yes
    UseKeychain yes
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
  

Here's a break down of Chris's answer emulating a workflow:

• Initialize git in a directory:

  git init

• Connect git to one remote repository (located in GitHub)

  git remote add origin git@github.com:your-username/your-repo.git

• Rename .git to something like .github

  mv .git .github

• Initialize git again

  git init

• Connect git to the other remote repository (located in GitLab)

  git remote add origin git@gitlab.com:your-username/your-repo.git

• Rename .git to something like .gitlab

  mv .git .gitlab

• Verify that current directory is connected to two different remote repositories

  git --git-dir=.github remote -v

  git --git-dir=.gitlab remote -v

• Pull remote (GitHub and GitLab) repositories

  git --git-dir=.github pull origin main
  git --git-dir=.gitlab pull origin main
  

• Add a file to both repositories

  git --git-dir=.github add README.md
  git --git-dir=.gitlab add README.md
  

• Write commit message

  git --git-dir=.github commit -m "operational overview"
  git --git-dir=.gitlab commit -m "operational overview"
  

• Push to remote

  git --git-dir=.github push -u origin main
  git --git-dir=.gitlab push -u origin main
  

The only additional thing we're doing here is using the --git-dir flag.

If you plan on doing this frequently you could add an alias in your shell config file (like .zprofile, bashrc, etc.):

export github="git --git-dir=.github"
export gitlab="git --git-dir=.gitlab"

Future operations like pull, push, add, commit can be performed like - github pull origin main, gitlab pull origin main, etc.