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Obviously you missed the text in parentheses in Part 1 - "Have an existing key pair? You can skip to Step 4." You can add as many public keys to your GitHub ac
by waffle_ss 15y ago
Obviously you missed the text in parentheses in Part 1 - "Have an existing key pair? You can skip to Step 4."
You can add as many public keys to your GitHub account as you want - I have like half a dozen for the different computers I use.
- CJefferson 15y agoOut of interest (serious question), do you know why someone would already have files, unless they were an existing key pair? Shouldn't step 2 say, if you already have any files, "Wow, something is up, what are these files doing here?". Alternatively, why not just start people off using username+password rather than fiddling with keys? Also, my belief is that newbies might not realise exactly what having "an existing key pair" is, and what it might already be connected to (VPNs or shell accounts they set up years ago, for example).
- waffle_ss 15y agoSSH keys are used because they are the de facto standard for git authentication - GitHub didn't invent this, this is pretty much how it is done with any remote git repo. I don't use Mac, so am not sure what applications might generate keypairs that the user would not be familiar with. But, the guide does have a step that moves existing keys to a backup folder, so they shouldn't get deleted, in any case. I'm not totally sure why they want a clean private key, and don't let the user simply copy the existing public key over if a keypair already exists.