CONFIGURATION FILE ------------------ The git configuration file contains a number of variables that affect the git command's behavior. They can be used by both the git plumbing and the porcelains. The variables are divided into sections, where in the fully qualified variable name the variable itself is the last dot-separated segment and the section name is everything before the last dot. The variable names are case-insensitive and only alphanumeric characters are allowed. Some variables may appear multiple times. The syntax is fairly flexible and permissive; whitespaces are mostly ignored. The '#' and ';' characters begin comments to the end of line, blank lines are ignored, lines containing strings enclosed in square brackets start sections and all the other lines are recognized as setting variables, in the form 'name = value'. If there is no equal sign on the line, the entire line is taken as 'name' and the variable is recognized as boolean "true". String values may be entirely or partially enclosed in double quotes; some variables may require special value format. Example ~~~~~~~ # Core variables [core] ; Don't trust file modes filemode = false # Our diff algorithm [diff] external = "/usr/local/bin/gnu-diff -u" renames = true Variables ~~~~~~~~~ Note that this list is non-comprehensive and not necessarily complete. For command-specific variables, you will find a more detailed description in the appropriate manual page. You will find a description of non-core porcelain configuration variables in the respective porcelain documentation. core.fileMode:: If false, the executable bit differences between the index and the working copy are ignored; useful on broken filesystems like FAT. See gitlink:git-update-index[1]. True by default. core.gitProxy:: A "proxy command" to execute (as 'command host port') instead of establishing direct connection to the remote server when using the git protocol for fetching. If the variable value is in the "COMMAND for DOMAIN" format, the command is applied only on hostnames ending with the specified domain string. This variable may be set multiple times and is matched in the given order; the first match wins. + Can be overridden by the 'GIT_PROXY_COMMAND' environment variable (which always applies universally, without the special "for" handling). core.ignoreStat:: The working copy files are assumed to stay unchanged until you mark them otherwise manually - Git will not detect the file changes by lstat() calls. This is useful on systems where those are very slow, such as Microsoft Windows. See gitlink:git-update-index[1]. False by default. core.preferSymlinkRefs:: Instead of the default "symref" format for HEAD and other symbolic reference files, use symbolic links. This is sometimes needed to work with old scripts that expect HEAD to be a symbolic link. core.logAllRefUpdates:: If true, `git-update-ref` will append a line to "$GIT_DIR/logs/" listing the new SHA1 and the date/time of the update. If the file does not exist it will be created automatically. This information can be used to determine what commit was the tip of a branch "2 days ago". This value is false by default (no logging). core.repositoryFormatVersion:: Internal variable identifying the repository format and layout version. core.sharedRepository:: If true, the repository is made shareable between several users in a group (making sure all the files and objects are group-writable). See gitlink:git-init-db[1]. False by default. core.warnAmbiguousRefs:: If true, git will warn you if the ref name you passed it is ambiguous and might match multiple refs in the .git/refs/ tree. True by default. core.compression:: An integer -1..9, indicating the compression level for objects that are not in a pack file. -1 is the zlib and git default. 0 means no compression, and 1..9 are various speed/size tradeoffs, 9 being slowest. core.legacyheaders:: A boolean which enables the legacy object header format in case you want to interoperate with old clients accessing the object database directly (where the "http://" and "rsync://" protocols count as direct access). alias.*:: Command aliases for the gitlink:git[1] command wrapper - e.g. after defining "alias.last = cat-file commit HEAD", the invocation "git last" is equivalent to "git cat-file commit HEAD". To avoid confusion and troubles with script usage, aliases that hide existing git commands are ignored. Arguments are split by spaces, the usual shell quoting and escaping is supported. quote pair and a backslash can be used to quote them. apply.whitespace:: Tells `git-apply` how to handle whitespaces, in the same way as the '--whitespace' option. See gitlink:git-apply[1]. pager.color:: A boolean to enable/disable colored output when the pager is in use (default is true). diff.color:: When true (or `always`), always use colors in patch. When false (or `never`), never. When set to `auto`, use colors only when the output is to the terminal. diff.color.:: Use customized color for diff colorization. `` specifies which part of the patch to use the specified color, and is one of `plain` (context text), `meta` (metainformation), `frag` (hunk header), `old` (removed lines), or `new` (added lines). The value for these configuration variables can be one of: `normal`, `bold`, `dim`, `ul`, `blink`, `reverse`, `reset`, `black`, `red`, `green`, `yellow`, `blue`, `magenta`, `cyan`, or `white`. diff.renameLimit:: The number of files to consider when performing the copy/rename detection; equivalent to the git diff option '-l'. diff.renames:: Tells git to detect renames. If set to any boolean value, it will enable basic rename detection. If set to "copies" or "copy", it will detect copies, as well. format.headers:: Additional email headers to include in a patch to be submitted by mail. See gitlink:git-format-patch[1]. gitcvs.enabled:: Whether the cvs pserver interface is enabled for this repository. See gitlink:git-cvsserver[1]. gitcvs.logfile:: Path to a log file where the cvs pserver interface well... logs various stuff. See gitlink:git-cvsserver[1]. http.sslVerify:: Whether to verify the SSL certificate when fetching or pushing over HTTPS. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY' environment variable. http.sslCert:: File containing the SSL certificate when fetching or pushing over HTTPS. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_SSL_CERT' environment variable. http.sslKey:: File containing the SSL private key when fetching or pushing over HTTPS. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_SSL_KEY' environment variable. http.sslCAInfo:: File containing the certificates to verify the peer with when fetching or pushing over HTTPS. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_SSL_CAINFO' environment variable. http.sslCAPath:: Path containing files with the CA certificates to verify the peer with when fetching or pushing over HTTPS. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_SSL_CAPATH' environment variable. http.maxRequests:: How many HTTP requests to launch in parallel. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_HTTP_MAX_REQUESTS' environment variable. Default is 5. http.lowSpeedLimit, http.lowSpeedTime:: If the HTTP transfer speed is less than 'http.lowSpeedLimit' for longer than 'http.lowSpeedTime' seconds, the transfer is aborted. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_HTTP_LOW_SPEED_LIMIT' and 'GIT_HTTP_LOW_SPEED_TIME' environment variables. i18n.commitEncoding:: Character encoding the commit messages are stored in; git itself does not care per se, but this information is necessary e.g. when importing commits from emails or in the gitk graphical history browser (and possibly at other places in the future or in other porcelains). See e.g. gitlink:git-mailinfo[1]. Defaults to 'utf-8'. merge.summary:: Whether to include summaries of merged commits in newly created merge commit messages. False by default. pack.window:: The size of the window used by gitlink:git-pack-objects[1] when no window size is given on the command line. Defaults to 10. pull.octopus:: The default merge strategy to use when pulling multiple branches at once. pull.twohead:: The default merge strategy to use when pulling a single branch. show.difftree:: The default gitlink:git-diff-tree[1] arguments to be used for gitlink:git-show[1]. showbranch.default:: The default set of branches for gitlink:git-show-branch[1]. See gitlink:git-show-branch[1]. tar.umask:: By default, gitlink:git-tar-tree[1] sets file and directories modes to 0666 or 0777. While this is both useful and acceptable for projects such as the Linux Kernel, it might be excessive for other projects. With this variable, it becomes possible to tell gitlink:git-tar-tree[1] to apply a specific umask to the modes above. The special value "user" indicates that the user's current umask will be used. This should be enough for most projects, as it will lead to the same permissions as gitlink:git-checkout[1] would use. The default value remains 0, which means world read-write. user.email:: Your email address to be recorded in any newly created commits. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL' and 'GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL' environment variables. See gitlink:git-commit-tree[1]. user.name:: Your full name to be recorded in any newly created commits. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_AUTHOR_NAME' and 'GIT_COMMITTER_NAME' environment variables. See gitlink:git-commit-tree[1]. whatchanged.difftree:: The default gitlink:git-diff-tree[1] arguments to be used for gitlink:git-whatchanged[1]. imap:: The configuration variables in the 'imap' section are described in gitlink:git-imap-send[1].