CONFIGURATION FILE ------------------ The git configuration file contains a number of variables that affect the git command's behavior. `.git/config` file for each repository is used to store the information for that repository, and `$HOME/.gitconfig` is used to store per user information to give fallback values for `.git/config` file. The file `/etc/gitconfig` can be used to store system-wide defaults. 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. Syntax ~~~~~~ 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. The file consists of sections and variables. A section begins with the name of the section in square brackets and continues until the next section begins. Section names are not case sensitive. Only alphanumeric characters, '`-`' and '`.`' are allowed in section names. Each variable must belong to some section, which means that there must be section header before first setting of a variable. Sections can be further divided into subsections. To begin a subsection put its name in double quotes, separated by space from the section name, in the section header, like in example below: -------- [section "subsection"] -------- Subsection names can contain any characters except newline (doublequote '`"`' and backslash have to be escaped as '`\"`' and '`\\`', respectively) and are case sensitive. Section header cannot span multiple lines. Variables may belong directly to a section or to a given subsection. You can have `[section]` if you have `[section "subsection"]`, but you don't need to. There is also (case insensitive) alternative `[section.subsection]` syntax. In this syntax subsection names follow the same restrictions as for section name. 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". The variable names are case-insensitive and only alphanumeric characters and '`-`' are allowed. There can be more than one value for a given variable; we say then that variable is multivalued. Leading and trailing whitespace in a variable value is discarded. Internal whitespace within a variable value is retained verbatim. The values following the equals sign in variable assign are all either a string, an integer, or a boolean. Boolean values may be given as yes/no, 0/1 or true/false. Case is not significant in boolean values, when converting value to the canonical form using '--bool' type specifier; `git-config` will ensure that the output is "true" or "false". String values may be entirely or partially enclosed in double quotes. You need to enclose variable value in double quotes if you want to preserve leading or trailing whitespace, or if variable value contains beginning of comment characters (if it contains '#' or ';'). Double quote '`"`' and backslash '`\`' characters in variable value must be escaped: use '`\"`' for '`"`' and '`\\`' for '`\`'. The following escape sequences (beside '`\"`' and '`\\`') are recognized: '`\n`' for newline character (NL), '`\t`' for horizontal tabulation (HT, TAB) and '`\b`' for backspace (BS). No other char escape sequence, nor octal char sequences are valid. Variable value ending in a '`\`' is continued on the next line in the customary UNIX fashion. 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 [branch "devel"] remote = origin merge = refs/heads/devel # Proxy settings [core] gitProxy="ssh" for "kernel.org" gitProxy=default-proxy ; for the rest 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.quotepath:: The commands that output paths (e.g. `ls-files`, `diff`), when not given the `-z` option, will quote "unusual" characters in the pathname by enclosing the pathname in a double-quote pair and with backslashes the same way strings in C source code are quoted. If this variable is set to false, the bytes higher than 0x80 are not quoted but output as verbatim. Note that double quote, backslash and control characters are always quoted without `-z` regardless of the setting of this variable. core.autocrlf:: If true, makes git convert `CRLF` at the end of lines in text files to `LF` when reading from the filesystem, and convert in reverse when writing to the filesystem. The variable can be set to 'input', in which case the conversion happens only while reading from the filesystem but files are written out with `LF` at the end of lines. Currently, which paths to consider "text" (i.e. be subjected to the autocrlf mechanism) is decided purely based on the contents. core.symlinks:: If false, symbolic links are checked out as small plain files that contain the link text. gitlink:git-update-index[1] and gitlink:git-add[1] will not change the recorded type to regular file. Useful on filesystems like FAT that do not support symbolic links. 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.bare:: If true this repository is assumed to be 'bare' and has no working directory associated with it. If this is the case a number of commands that require a working directory will be disabled, such as gitlink:git-add[1] or gitlink:git-merge[1]. + This setting is automatically guessed by gitlink:git-clone[1] or gitlink:git-init[1] when the repository was created. By default a repository that ends in "/.git" is assumed to be not bare (bare = false), while all other repositories are assumed to be bare (bare = true). core.worktree:: Set the path to the working tree. The value will not be used in combination with repositories found automatically in a .git directory (i.e. $GIT_DIR is not set). This can be overriden by the GIT_WORK_TREE environment variable and the '--work-tree' command line option. core.logAllRefUpdates:: Enable the reflog. Updates to a ref <ref> is logged to the file "$GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>", by appending the new and old SHA1, the date/time and the reason of the update, but only when the file exists. If this configuration variable is set to true, missing "$GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>" file is automatically created for branch heads. + This information can be used to determine what commit was the tip of a branch "2 days ago". + This value is true by default in a repository that has a working directory associated with it, and false by default in a bare repository. core.repositoryFormatVersion:: Internal variable identifying the repository format and layout version. core.sharedRepository:: When 'group' (or 'true'), the repository is made shareable between several users in a group (making sure all the files and objects are group-writable). When 'all' (or 'world' or 'everybody'), the repository will be readable by all users, additionally to being group-shareable. When 'umask' (or 'false'), git will use permissions reported by umask(2). See gitlink:git-init[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 a default compression level. -1 is the zlib default. 0 means no compression, and 1..9 are various speed/size tradeoffs, 9 being slowest. core.loosecompression:: An integer -1..9, indicating the compression level for objects that are not in a pack file. -1 is the zlib default. 0 means no compression, and 1..9 are various speed/size tradeoffs, 9 being slowest. If not set, defaults to core.compression. If that is not set, defaults to 0 (best speed). core.packedGitWindowSize:: Number of bytes of a pack file to map into memory in a single mapping operation. Larger window sizes may allow your system to process a smaller number of large pack files more quickly. Smaller window sizes will negatively affect performance due to increased calls to the operating system's memory manager, but may improve performance when accessing a large number of large pack files. + Default is 1 MiB if NO_MMAP was set at compile time, otherwise 32 MiB on 32 bit platforms and 1 GiB on 64 bit platforms. This should be reasonable for all users/operating systems. You probably do not need to adjust this value. + Common unit suffixes of 'k', 'm', or 'g' are supported. core.packedGitLimit:: Maximum number of bytes to map simultaneously into memory from pack files. If Git needs to access more than this many bytes at once to complete an operation it will unmap existing regions to reclaim virtual address space within the process. + Default is 256 MiB on 32 bit platforms and 8 GiB on 64 bit platforms. This should be reasonable for all users/operating systems, except on the largest projects. You probably do not need to adjust this value. + Common unit suffixes of 'k', 'm', or 'g' are supported. core.deltaBaseCacheLimit:: Maximum number of bytes to reserve for caching base objects that multiple deltafied objects reference. By storing the entire decompressed base objects in a cache Git is able to avoid unpacking and decompressing frequently used base objects multiple times. + Default is 16 MiB on all platforms. This should be reasonable for all users/operating systems, except on the largest projects. You probably do not need to adjust this value. + Common unit suffixes of 'k', 'm', or 'g' are supported. core.excludesfile:: In addition to '.gitignore' (per-directory) and '.git/info/exclude', git looks into this file for patterns of files which are not meant to be tracked. See gitlink:gitignore[5]. core.editor:: Commands such as `commit` and `tag` that lets you edit messages by launching an editor uses the value of this variable when it is set, and the environment variable `GIT_EDITOR` is not set. The order of preference is `GIT_EDITOR` environment, `core.editor`, `VISUAL` and `EDITOR` environment variables and then finally `vi`. core.pager:: The command that git will use to paginate output. Can be overridden with the `GIT_PAGER` environment variable. 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. + If the alias expansion is prefixed with an exclamation point, it will be treated as a shell command. For example, defining "alias.new = !gitk --all --not ORIG_HEAD", the invocation "git new" is equivalent to running the shell command "gitk --all --not ORIG_HEAD". apply.whitespace:: Tells `git-apply` how to handle whitespaces, in the same way as the '--whitespace' option. See gitlink:git-apply[1]. branch.autosetupmerge:: Tells `git-branch` and `git-checkout` to setup new branches so that gitlink:git-pull[1] will appropriately merge from that remote branch. Note that even if this option is not set, this behavior can be chosen per-branch using the `--track` and `--no-track` options. This option defaults to false. branch.<name>.remote:: When in branch <name>, it tells `git fetch` which remote to fetch. If this option is not given, `git fetch` defaults to remote "origin". branch.<name>.merge:: When in branch <name>, it tells `git fetch` the default refspec to be marked for merging in FETCH_HEAD. The value has exactly to match a remote part of one of the refspecs which are fetched from the remote given by "branch.<name>.remote". The merge information is used by `git pull` (which at first calls `git fetch`) to lookup the default branch for merging. Without this option, `git pull` defaults to merge the first refspec fetched. Specify multiple values to get an octopus merge. If you wish to setup `git pull` so that it merges into <name> from another branch in the local repository, you can point branch.<name>.merge to the desired branch, and use the special setting `.` (a period) for branch.<name>.remote. clean.requireForce:: A boolean to make git-clean do nothing unless given -f or -n. Defaults to false. color.branch:: A boolean to enable/disable color in the output of gitlink:git-branch[1]. May be set to `true` (or `always`), `false` (or `never`) or `auto`, in which case colors are used only when the output is to a terminal. Defaults to false. color.branch.<slot>:: Use customized color for branch coloration. `<slot>` is one of `current` (the current branch), `local` (a local branch), `remote` (a tracking branch in refs/remotes/), `plain` (other refs). + The value for these configuration variables is a list of colors (at most two) and attributes (at most one), separated by spaces. The colors accepted are `normal`, `black`, `red`, `green`, `yellow`, `blue`, `magenta`, `cyan` and `white`; the attributes are `bold`, `dim`, `ul`, `blink` and `reverse`. The first color given is the foreground; the second is the background. The position of the attribute, if any, doesn't matter. color.diff:: 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. color.diff.<slot>:: Use customized color for diff colorization. `<slot>` 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), `new` (added lines), `commit` (commit headers), or `whitespace` (highlighting dubious whitespace). The values of these variables may be specified as in color.branch.<slot>. color.pager:: A boolean to enable/disable colored output when the pager is in use (default is true). color.status:: A boolean to enable/disable color in the output of gitlink:git-status[1]. May be set to `true` (or `always`), `false` (or `never`) or `auto`, in which case colors are used only when the output is to a terminal. Defaults to false. color.status.<slot>:: Use customized color for status colorization. `<slot>` is one of `header` (the header text of the status message), `added` or `updated` (files which are added but not committed), `changed` (files which are changed but not added in the index), or `untracked` (files which are not tracked by git). The values of these variables may be specified as in color.branch.<slot>. commit.template:: Specify a file to use as the template for new commit messages. diff.autorefreshindex:: When using `git diff` to compare with work tree files, do not consider stat-only change as changed. Instead, silently run `git update-index --refresh` to update the cached stat information for paths whose contents in the work tree match the contents in the index. This option defaults to true. Note that this affects only `git diff` Porcelain, and not lower level `diff` commands, such as `git diff-files`. 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. fetch.unpackLimit:: If the number of objects fetched over the git native transfer is below this limit, then the objects will be unpacked into loose object files. However if the number of received objects equals or exceeds this limit then the received pack will be stored as a pack, after adding any missing delta bases. Storing the pack from a push can make the push operation complete faster, especially on slow filesystems. format.headers:: Additional email headers to include in a patch to be submitted by mail. See gitlink:git-format-patch[1]. format.suffix:: The default for format-patch is to output files with the suffix `.patch`. Use this variable to change that suffix (make sure to include the dot if you want it). gc.aggressiveWindow:: The window size parameter used in the delta compression algorithm used by 'git gc --aggressive'. This defaults to 10. gc.packrefs:: `git gc` does not run `git pack-refs` in a bare repository by default so that older dumb-transport clients can still fetch from the repository. Setting this to `true` lets `git gc` to run `git pack-refs`. Setting this to `false` tells `git gc` never to run `git pack-refs`. The default setting is `notbare`. Enable it only when you know you do not have to support such clients. The default setting will change to `true` at some stage, and setting this to `false` will continue to prevent `git pack-refs` from being run from `git gc`. gc.reflogexpire:: `git reflog expire` removes reflog entries older than this time; defaults to 90 days. gc.reflogexpireunreachable:: `git reflog expire` removes reflog entries older than this time and are not reachable from the current tip; defaults to 30 days. gc.rerereresolved:: Records of conflicted merge you resolved earlier are kept for this many days when `git rerere gc` is run. The default is 60 days. See gitlink:git-rerere[1]. gc.rerereunresolved:: Records of conflicted merge you have not resolved are kept for this many days when `git rerere gc` is run. The default is 15 days. See gitlink:git-rerere[1]. rerere.enabled:: Activate recording of resolved conflicts, so that identical conflict hunks can be resolved automatically, should they be encountered again. See gitlink:git-rerere[1]. gitcvs.enabled:: Whether the CVS server interface is enabled for this repository. See gitlink:git-cvsserver[1]. gitcvs.logfile:: Path to a log file where the CVS server interface well... logs various stuff. See gitlink:git-cvsserver[1]. gitcvs.allbinary:: If true, all files are sent to the client in mode '-kb'. This causes the client to treat all files as binary files which suppresses any newline munging it otherwise might do. A work-around for the fact that there is no way yet to set single files to mode '-kb'. gitcvs.dbname:: Database used by git-cvsserver to cache revision information derived from the git repository. The exact meaning depends on the used database driver, for SQLite (which is the default driver) this is a filename. Supports variable substitution (see gitlink:git-cvsserver[1] for details). May not contain semicolons (`;`). Default: '%Ggitcvs.%m.sqlite' gitcvs.dbdriver:: Used Perl DBI driver. You can specify any available driver for this here, but it might not work. git-cvsserver is tested with 'DBD::SQLite', reported to work with 'DBD::Pg', and reported *not* to work with 'DBD::mysql'. Experimental feature. May not contain double colons (`:`). Default: 'SQLite'. See gitlink:git-cvsserver[1]. gitcvs.dbuser, gitcvs.dbpass:: Database user and password. Only useful if setting 'gitcvs.dbdriver', since SQLite has no concept of database users and/or passwords. 'gitcvs.dbuser' supports variable substitution (see gitlink:git-cvsserver[1] for details). All gitcvs variables except for 'gitcvs.allbinary' can also be specified as 'gitcvs.<access_method>.<varname>' (where 'access_method' is one of "ext" and "pserver") to make them apply only for the given access method. 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. http.noEPSV:: A boolean which disables using of EPSV ftp command by curl. This can helpful with some "poor" ftp servers which don't support EPSV mode. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_CURL_FTP_NO_EPSV' environment variable. Default is false (curl will use EPSV). 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'. i18n.logOutputEncoding:: Character encoding the commit messages are converted to when running `git-log` and friends. log.showroot:: If true, the initial commit will be shown as a big creation event. This is equivalent to a diff against an empty tree. Tools like gitlink:git-log[1] or gitlink:git-whatchanged[1], which normally hide the root commit will now show it. True by default. merge.summary:: Whether to include summaries of merged commits in newly created merge commit messages. False by default. merge.tool:: Controls which merge resolution program is used by gitlink:git-mergetool[l]. Valid values are: "kdiff3", "tkdiff", "meld", "xxdiff", "emerge", "vimdiff", "gvimdiff", and "opendiff". merge.verbosity:: Controls the amount of output shown by the recursive merge strategy. Level 0 outputs nothing except a final error message if conflicts were detected. Level 1 outputs only conflicts, 2 outputs conflicts and file changes. Level 5 and above outputs debugging information. The default is level 2. Can be overriden by 'GIT_MERGE_VERBOSITY' environment variable. merge.<driver>.name:: Defines a human readable name for a custom low-level merge driver. See gitlink:gitattributes[5] for details. merge.<driver>.driver:: Defines the command that implements a custom low-level merge driver. See gitlink:gitattributes[5] for details. merge.<driver>.recursive:: Names a low-level merge driver to be used when performing an internal merge between common ancestors. See gitlink:gitattributes[5] for details. 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. pack.depth:: The maximum delta depth used by gitlink:git-pack-objects[1] when no maximum depth is given on the command line. Defaults to 50. pack.windowMemory:: The window memory size limit used by gitlink:git-pack-objects[1] when no limit is given on the command line. The value can be suffixed with "k", "m", or "g". Defaults to 0, meaning no limit. pack.compression:: An integer -1..9, indicating the compression level for objects in a pack file. -1 is the zlib default. 0 means no compression, and 1..9 are various speed/size tradeoffs, 9 being slowest. If not set, defaults to core.compression. If that is not set, defaults to -1. pack.deltaCacheSize:: The maximum memory in bytes used for caching deltas in gitlink:git-pack-objects[1]. A value of 0 means no limit. Defaults to 0. pack.deltaCacheLimit:: The maxium size of a delta, that is cached in gitlink:git-pack-objects[1]. Defaults to 1000. 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. remote.<name>.url:: The URL of a remote repository. See gitlink:git-fetch[1] or gitlink:git-push[1]. remote.<name>.fetch:: The default set of "refspec" for gitlink:git-fetch[1]. See gitlink:git-fetch[1]. remote.<name>.push:: The default set of "refspec" for gitlink:git-push[1]. See gitlink:git-push[1]. remote.<name>.skipDefaultUpdate:: If true, this remote will be skipped by default when updating using the remote subcommand of gitlink:git-remote[1]. remote.<name>.receivepack:: The default program to execute on the remote side when pushing. See option \--exec of gitlink:git-push[1]. remote.<name>.uploadpack:: The default program to execute on the remote side when fetching. See option \--exec of gitlink:git-fetch-pack[1]. remote.<name>.tagopt:: Setting this value to --no-tags disables automatic tag following when fetching from remote <name> remotes.<group>:: The list of remotes which are fetched by "git remote update <group>". See gitlink:git-remote[1]. repack.usedeltabaseoffset:: Allow gitlink:git-repack[1] to create packs that uses delta-base offset. Defaults to false. 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:: This variable can be used to restrict the permission bits of tar archive entries. The default is 0002, which turns off the world write bit. The special value "user" indicates that the archiving user's umask will be used instead. See umask(2) and gitlink:git-archive[1]. user.email:: Your email address to be recorded in any newly created commits. Can be overridden by the 'GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL', 'GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL', and '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]. user.signingkey:: If gitlink:git-tag[1] is not selecting the key you want it to automatically when creating a signed tag, you can override the default selection with this variable. This option is passed unchanged to gpg's --local-user parameter, so you may specify a key using any method that gpg supports. 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]. receive.unpackLimit:: If the number of objects received in a push is below this limit then the objects will be unpacked into loose object files. However if the number of received objects equals or exceeds this limit then the received pack will be stored as a pack, after adding any missing delta bases. Storing the pack from a push can make the push operation complete faster, especially on slow filesystems. receive.denyNonFastForwards:: If set to true, git-receive-pack will deny a ref update which is not a fast forward. Use this to prevent such an update via a push, even if that push is forced. This configuration variable is set when initializing a shared repository. transfer.unpackLimit:: When `fetch.unpackLimit` or `receive.unpackLimit` are not set, the value of this variable is used instead.