GIT: Git configuration

7.1. Git configuration levels

The git config command allows you to configure your Git settings. These settings can be system wide, user or repository specific.

A more specific setting overwrites values in the previous level. A setting for the repository overrides the user setting and a user setting overrides a system wide setting.

7.1.1. Git system-wide configuration

You can provide a system wide configuration for your Git settings. A system wide configuration is not very common. Most settings are user specific or repository specific as described in the next chapters.

On a Unix based system, Git uses the /etc/gitconfig file for this system-wide configuration. To set this up, ensure you have sufficient rights, i.e. root rights, in your OS and use the --system option for the git config command.

7.1.2. Git user configuration

Git allows you to store user settings in the .gitconfig file located in the user home directory. This is also called the global Git configuration.

For example Git stores the committer and author of a change in each commit. This and additional information can be stored in the Git user settings.

In each Git repository you can also configure the settings for this repository. User configuration is done if you include the --global option in the git config command.

7.1.3. Repository specific configuration

You can also store repository specific settings in the .git/config file of a repository. Use the --local or use no flag at all. If neither the --system not the --global parameter is used, the setting is specific for the current Git repository.

7.2. User credential configuration

You have to configure at least your user and email address to be able to commit to a Git repository because this information is stored in each commit.

# configure the user which will be used by Git
# this should be not an acronym but your full name
git config --global user.name "Firstname Lastname"

# configure the email address
git config --global user.email "your.email@example.org"

7.3. Push configuration

If your are using Git in a version below 2.0 you should also execute the following command.

# set default so that only the current branch is pushed
git config --global push.default simple

This configures Git so that the git push command pushes only the active branch to your Git remote repository. As of Git version 2.0 this is the default and therefore it is good practice to configure this behavior.

7.4. Avoid merge commits for pulling

By default, Git runs the git fetch followed by the git merge command if you use the git pull command. You can configure git to use git rebase instead of git merge for the pull command via the following setting.

# set default so that you avoid unnecessary commits
git config --global branch.autosetuprebase always

This setting helps avoiding merge commits during the pull operation which synchronizes your Git repository with a remote repository. The author of this description always uses this setting for his Git repositories.

7.5. Allow rebasing with uncommited changes

If you want Git to automatically save your uncommited changes before a rebase you can activate autoStash. After the rebase is done your changes will get reapplied. For an explanation of git stash 

git config --global rebase.autoStash true

Before Git v2.6 git pull --rebase didn’t respected this setting.

7.6. Color Highlighting

The following commands enables color highlighting for Git in the console.

git config --global color.ui auto

7.7. Setting the default editor

By default Git uses the system default editor which is taken from the VISUAL or EDITOR environment variables if set. You can configure a different one via the following setting.

# setup vim as default editor for Git (Linux)
git config --global core.editor vim

7.8. Setting the default merge tool

File conflicts might occur in Git during an operation which combines different versions of the same files. In this case the user can directly edit the file to resolve the conflict.

Git allows also to configure a merge tool for solving these conflicts. You have to use third party visual merge tools like tortoisemerge, p4merge, kdiff3 etc. A Google search for these tools help you to install them on your platform. Keep in mind that such tools are not required, you can always edit the files directly in a text editor.

Once you have installed them you can set your selected tool as default merge tool with the following command.

# setup kdiff3 as default merge tool (Linux)
git config --global merge.tool kdiff3

# to install it under Ubuntu use
sudo apt-get install kdiff3

7.9. More settings

All possible Git settings are described under the following link: git-config manual page

7.10. Query Git settings

To query your Git settings, execute the following command:

git config --list

If you want to query the global settings you can use the following command.

git config --global --list