Git Configuration Options

2nd June 2017

You can set various Git configuration options within your repository. This configuration option list can be viewed by running the git config command, passing in --list as an option.

$ git config --list

You can then set a configuration option by typing git config [option] [value].

Set the Git username

To set the Git username, you can write the following.

$ git config user.name 'John Doe'

This will set the username for this local repository. If you want to set Git configuration options globally, you can pass in the --global argument.

$ git config --global user.name 'John Doe'

Set the Git email address

You can set an email address associated to a Git repository by using user.email.

$ git config user.email 'johndoe@example.com'

Git File Permissions

To make Git ignore changes that have been made to file permissions, you can use the core.filemode configuration option and setting it to false.

$ git config core.filemode false

Git Editor

If you want to set the editor for Git, use core.editor.

$ git config core.editor "vim"

Change Git Output Colours

Git automatically colours most of its output. This can be switched off using the color.ui option and setting it to false.

$ git config color.ui false

The value of color.ui is auto by default. There are a variety of colours you can set:

[color]
  diff = auto
  status = auto
  branch = auto
  interactive = auto
  ui = true
  pager = true

This allows you to control what you want to have coloured in what way.

[color "status"]
  added = green
  changed = red bold
  untracked = magenta bold

[color "branch"]
  remote = yellow

For example, to change the status changed and status untracked colours, you can run the following:

$ git config color.status.changed blue
$ git config color.status.untracked magenta

Set the Git Merge Tool

Git will launch a merge tool in the event of a merge conflict. The program used to resolve the merge conflict can be set using the merge.tool configuration option.

$ git config merge.tool kdiff3