config

Allows to get and set configuration data.

Main configuration files:

• ~/.gitconfig: for all repos on current computer. --global option.

• .git/config: cur repo only. Takes precedence over global options.

It is a .cfg file of type:

[group]
    a = b
    c = d

Corresponding command lines of type:

group.a b
group.c d

Commands

List the currently used value of all non-default configs:

git config -l

Read only from the global file:

git config --global -l

Get single value:

git config user.name

Set value locally:

git config user.name "User Name"

Set value globally:

git config --global user.name "User Name"

Get multiple values: TODO

git config --get-all user.name

Set boolean:

git config X true
git config X false

Most important configs with bad defaults

Non default ones that you should always set:

# Username and email on commits:
git config --global user.name "Ciro Santilli"
git config --global user.email "ciro@mail.com"

# Remember HTTP/HTTPS passwords for 15 minutes:
git config --global credential.helper cache

# Remember HTTP/HTTPS passwords for given time:
git config --global credential.helper "cache --timeout=3600"

#Let git color terminal output by default (but not if it goes to pipes,
# or the color escape chars might break programs):
git config --global color.ui auto

# See grep
git config --global grep.lineNumber true
git config --global grep.extendedRegexp true

Most important settings with good defaults

• core.pager: pager to use. less by default.
• color.ui: when to add color ANSI escapes. auto is the best option, which only adds the escapes if not piped.
• core.editor: editor to use for commit and tag messages.
• core.excludesfile: path of a global .gititnore file for all projects.
• commit.template: commit message template file path

autocrlf

core.autocrlf deals with Windows CRLF line terminator issues.

http://stackoverflow.com/a/1250133/895245

Possible values:

• false: (default) don’t touch your code. This is what you should need if you have a good editor and workflow…
• true: on checkout, convert LF to CRLF. On checkout, convert LF to CRLF.
• input: CRLF to LF on commit. Nothing on checkout.

Conversions are only done if the entire file has a single line termination style: if there is at least one single different line ending, nothing ever gets done by Git.

Conversions don’t touch the working directory: only the repository contents.

alias

Alias:

git config --global alias.st status

Now you can use the alias as:

git st

You can also alias to shell commands:

git config --global alias.pwd '!pwd'

And this works:

git pwd

It is always executed at the repo root.

This allows for the very useful combo:

git config --global alias.sh '!exec '

Allowing you to do any command at top-level:

git exec sh

UTF8 filenames

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5854967/git-msysgit-accents-utf-8-the-definitive-answers

quotepath

If true, file paths that contain characters non printable bytes are printed as quoted C strings literals in commands, in particular UTF-8 characters are encoded.

If false and the encoding is compatible with your terminal, you will see nice characters.

So should be false for UTF-8 usage.