Table of Contents

Configuration

Every time Git is used for the first time, two basic configurations must be set: your name and email address. This information is used to identify your actions in the repository.

git config --global user.name "First I Last"
git config --global user.email "first.last@gmail.com"

When creating a new repository from the CLI, you may see the following message:

$ git init
hint: Using 'master' as the name for the initial branch. This default branch name
hint: is subject to change. To configure the initial branch name to use in all
hint: of your new repositories, which will suppress this warning, call:
hint: 
hint:   git config --global init.defaultBranch <name>
hint: 
hint: Names commonly chosen instead of 'master' are 'main', 'trunk' and
hint: 'development'. The just-created branch can be renamed via this command:
hint: 
hint:   git branch -m <name>
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/hades/Documents/repos/AzureTerraform/.git/
$ git config --global init.defaultBranch main

Configuration Scopes

Git configuration can be set at different levels:

  • System: Applies to every user and repository on the system (/etc/gitconfig)
  • Global: Applies to all repositories for the current user (~/.gitconfig)
  • Local: Applies only to the current repository (.git/config)

You can view your current configuration with:

git config --list --show-origin

Conditional Configs

You can use conditional includes to apply different Git configurations based on the directory. This is useful for separating work and personal projects.

Example: Add these lines to your ~/.gitconfig:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/projects/work/"]
    path = ~/projects/work/.gitconfig

[includeIf "gitdir:~/projects/personal/"]
    path = ~/projects/personal/.gitconfig

Below are the contents of the two config files specified above.

Contents of ~/projects/work/.gitconfig:

[user]
    email = first.last@work.com
[commit]
    gpgsign = true

Contents of ~/projects/personal/.gitconfig:

[user]
    email = first.last@gmail.com
[commit]
    gpgsign = false

Other Useful Configuration Options

  • Set your default text editor:

    git config --global core.editor "nano"

  • Enable colored output:

    git config --global color.ui auto

  • Set up a useful alias:

    git config --global alias.st status

Editing Configuration Directly

You can edit your global config file directly with:

git config --global --edit

Or open the config file in your preferred editor:

vi ~/.gitconfig

Viewing Effective Configuration

To see the effective configuration and where each value is set:

git config --list --show-origin

References

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