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git config

git config purpose is to configure your git installation in order to confortably save your (or your team) precious time .

During this article some examples will be shown and hopefully you'll be able to configure your git to fit your best preferences.

Basic usage

git config is a command line interface to configure your .gitconfig files. You may add/change or remove your git preferences with this command.

Setting configuration values

As an basic example, let configure your name and e-mail into your git installation.

# git config theorical basic syntax
# git config <--directives-you-want-to-use> <option.suboption> <value>

git config --global user.email  "your@mail.com"
git config --global user.name  "Your Name"

PS:. --global directive will be explained in the section Configuration levels

Retrieving configuration values

To retrieve the configuration you've done in the example above do the following.

You just have to use git config <option> without assigning any value to retrieve the value.

#Let's say you want to know your configured user.name
git config user.name 

#OUTPUT:
# Your Name

<option> accepts TAB AUTOCOMPLETE. This is great when you don't know what options are availabe to you!

git config user.<press TAB twice>

#OUTPUT:
# user.email        user.name         user.signingkey

Removing configuration values

When you mistype a configuration name or value, you'll want to remove it's register inside your .gitconfig file. In order to do that you need to use the --unset directive.

# Let's add a wrong configuration
git config user.age 25

# To remove user.age use --unset
git config --unset user.age

What git config really does inside your OS?

git config is a command that store your configurations across the .gitconfig files located in your OS.

You will want use this command to avoid architectural mistyping errors inside the .gitconfig file.

When you have a brand new git installation in your machine, your .gitconfig file will probably be empty.

cat ~/.gitconfig 

#Output: (EMPTY FILE)

After running the basic examples above, your .gitconfig file may look like this:

cat ~/.gitconfig 

#Output:
#[user]
#     email = your@mail.com
#     name = Your Name

Configuration levels

As said before, there are more .gitconfig files around your OS than the file located in your home folder ~/.gitconfig.

Each of these files corresponds to a hierarquic level of configuration.

  • /etc/gitconfig : Configuration relative to the whole OS (All OS users).
  • ~/.gitconfig : Configuration relative to your OS user (Unix based OS)
  • your_project_directory/.git/config : Configuration relative to a specific git repository.

For more information please take a look on how these configurations are interrelated.

Level Directive Location (Unix OS) Importance
Entire OS --system /etc/gitconfig Using git config --system you'll be setting a configuration to the whole OS. all OS users will be affected.
Your OS User --global ~/.gitconfig Using git config --global the configuration scope will be only for the current logged user. Everything you configure here will override the --system conf.
Local git repository --local (Or none, this is default) your_project_directory/.git/config Using git config --local the configuration scope will be only for the current repository. Everything you configure here will override the --system and --global conf.

Most common git configurations you may take advantage of.

Colors

You can configure your git console colors very precisely using predefined colors or hexadecimal color values.

Color definition process

When configuring a color you need first to enable color configuration. There are six main color areas you can configure with true or false.:

  • color.branch: Colors referent your git branch
  • color.decorate: git log --decorate output colors.
  • color.diff: Colors of diff presentations.
  • color.grep: Output colors of git grep command.
  • color.interactive: Colors of --interactive directive.
  • color.status: Colors used when showing your git repository status. git status

When you set any of these areas as true, you'll be able to configure their colors (slots).

For instance color.status, have the following slots of color to change:

  • color.status.added
  • color.status.changed
  • color.status.header
  • color.status.nobranch
  • color.status.untracked
  • color.status.updated

Let's say you want your modified files listed on git status -s to be shown in magenta, you need to do the following:

# 1 - Make sure you have your color.status marked as true, this will enable you to configure all git status slots colors
git config color.status true

# 2 - Now you're able to change the color slot of modified files to magenta.
git config color.status.changed magenta

It works the same configuring other color areas.

Default color list

The predefined git colors are listed below.

  • normal
  • black
  • red
  • green
  • yellow
  • blue
  • magenta
  • cyan
  • white

Editor

Sometimes when using git, it opens an text editor.

If the text editor is not of your preference you can say to git which one you want to use with the option core.editor

# Sets vim as my OS user prefered terminal text editor.
git config --global core.editor vim

Aliases

Aliases are great to reduce your daily efforts using git command line.

Using git aliases you can create shortcuts from simple to complex commands that will save you lots of typing energy.

Simple command alias example

If you want to shorten your git commit command to git ci.

# git config alias.<alias_name> <command being shortened>
git config --global alias.ci commit

# Using the alias
git ci

PS:. --global directive is advised to use, because normally aliases are going to be integrated inside your daily workflow.

Complex command aliases

Shortening git commit to git ci, may not look like something of great improvement. To show you the aliases power, I'm going to explain this article User friendly git log which creates an alias for a beautiful git log command.

The normal git log command.

Normal git log

The extended git log command.

Improved git log

# This git log command shows the <commit hash> - <branch> - <commit message> - <elapsed time> <commiter name>
git log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit

# Now let's encapsulate this inside a git lg alias
git config --global alias.lg "log --color --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bo
ld blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit"

# Using the alias
git lg

# Using the alias showing the diff code.
git lg -p

# Using the alias showing the last two commits.
git lg 2

Summary

The briefly explanation in this article may be enough to help you saving time configuring an git environment that is confortable and productive to you.

Topics we covered so far:

  • Configuration values.
  • .gitconfig file architecture.
  • Color configuration
  • Text editor configuration
  • The power within git aliases.

In case you want to learn more about git config, check its Manual Page.

Guilherme Soldateli

09/03/2017

Career Path 3: Modern Frontend Developer