English ▾ Topics ▾ Version 2.8.6 ▾ git-config last updated in 2.56.0

NAME

git-config - Get and set repository or global options

SYNOPSIS

git config [<file-option>] [type] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] name [value [value_regex]]
git config [<file-option>] [type] --add name value
git config [<file-option>] [type] --replace-all name value [value_regex]
git config [<file-option>] [type] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] --get name [value_regex]
git config [<file-option>] [type] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] --get-all name [value_regex]
git config [<file-option>] [type] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] [--name-only] --get-regexp name_regex [value_regex]
git config [<file-option>] [type] [-z|--null] --get-urlmatch name URL
git config [<file-option>] --unset name [value_regex]
git config [<file-option>] --unset-all name [value_regex]
git config [<file-option>] --rename-section old_name new_name
git config [<file-option>] --remove-section name
git config [<file-option>] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] [--name-only] -l | --list
git config [<file-option>] --get-color name [default]
git config [<file-option>] --get-colorbool name [stdout-is-tty]
git config [<file-option>] -e | --edit

DESCRIPTION

You can query/set/replace/unset options with this command. The name is actually the section and the key separated by a dot, and the value will be escaped.

Multiple lines can be added to an option by using the --add option. If you want to update or unset an option which can occur on multiple lines, a POSIX regexp value_regex needs to be given. Only the existing values that match the regexp are updated or unset. If you want to handle the lines that do not match the regex, just prepend a single exclamation mark in front (see also EXAMPLES).

The type specifier can be either --int or --bool, to make git config ensure that the variable(s) are of the given type and convert the value to the canonical form (simple decimal number for int, a "true" or "false" string for bool), or --path, which does some path expansion (see --path below). If no type specifier is passed, no checks or transformations are performed on the value.

When reading, the values are read from the system, global and repository local configuration files by default, and options --system, --global, --local and --file <filename> can be used to tell the command to read from only that location (see FILES).

When writing, the new value is written to the repository local configuration file by default, and options --system, --global, --file <filename> can be used to tell the command to write to that location (you can say --local but that is the default).

This command will fail with non-zero status upon error. Some exit codes are:

  • The section or key is invalid (ret=1),

  • no section or name was provided (ret=2),

  • the config file is invalid (ret=3),

  • the config file cannot be written (ret=4),

  • you try to unset an option which does not exist (ret=5),

  • you try to unset/set an option for which multiple lines match (ret=5), or

  • you try to use an invalid regexp (ret=6).

On success, the command returns the exit code 0.

OPTIONS

--replace-all

Default behavior is to replace at most one line. This replaces all lines matching the key (and optionally the value_regex).

--add

Adds a new line to the option without altering any existing values. This is the same as providing ^$ as the value_regex in --replace-all.

--get

Get the value for a given key (optionally filtered by a regex matching the value). Returns error code 1 if the key was not found and the last value if multiple key values were found.

--get-all

Like get, but returns all values for a multi-valued key.

--get-regexp

Like --get-all, but interprets the name as a regular expression and writes out the key names. Regular expression matching is currently case-sensitive and done against a canonicalized version of the key in which section and variable names are lowercased, but subsection names are not.

--get-urlmatch name URL

When given a two-part name section.key, the value for section.<url>.key whose <url> part matches the best to the given URL is returned (if no such key exists, the value for section.key is used as a fallback). When given just the section as name, do so for all the keys in the section and list them. Returns error code 1 if no value is found.

--global

For writing options: write to global ~/.gitconfig file rather than the repository .git/config, write to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config file if this file exists and the ~/.gitconfig file doesn’t.

For reading options: read only from global ~/.gitconfig and from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config rather than from all available files.

See also FILES.

--system

For writing options: write to system-wide $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig rather than the repository .git/config.

For reading options: read only from system-wide $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig rather than from all available files.

See also FILES.

--local

For writing options: write to the repository .git/config file. This is the default behavior.

For reading options: read only from the repository .git/config rather than from all available files.

See also FILES.

-f config-file
--file config-file

Use the given config file instead of the one specified by GIT_CONFIG.

--blob blob

Similar to --file but use the given blob instead of a file. E.g. you can use master:.gitmodules to read values from the file .gitmodules in the master branch. See "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in gitrevisions[7] for a more complete list of ways to spell blob names.

--remove-section

Remove the given section from the configuration file.

--rename-section

Rename the given section to a new name.

--unset

Remove the line matching the key from config file.

--unset-all

Remove all lines matching the key from config file.

-l
--list

List all variables set in config file, along with their values.

--bool

git config will ensure that the output is "true" or "false"

--int

git config will ensure that the output is a simple decimal number. An optional value suffix of k, m, or g in the config file will cause the value to be multiplied by 1024, 1048576, or 1073741824 prior to output.

--bool-or-int

git config will ensure that the output matches the format of either --bool or --int, as described above.

--path

git-config will expand leading ~ to the value of $HOME, and ~user to the home directory for the specified user. This option has no effect when setting the value (but you can use git config bla ~/ from the command line to let your shell do the expansion).

-z
--null

For all options that output values and/or keys, always end values with the null character (instead of a newline). Use newline instead as a delimiter between key and value. This allows for secure parsing of the output without getting confused e.g. by values that contain line breaks.

--name-only

Output only the names of config variables for --list or --get-regexp.

--show-origin

Augment the output of all queried config options with the origin type (file, standard input, blob, command line) and the actual origin (config file path, ref, or blob id if applicable).

--get-colorbool name [stdout-is-tty]

Find the color setting for name (e.g. color.diff) and output "true" or "false". stdout-is-tty should be either "true" or "false", and is taken into account when configuration says "auto". If stdout-is-tty is missing, then checks the standard output of the command itself, and exits with status 0 if color is to be used, or exits with status 1 otherwise. When the color setting for name is undefined, the command uses color.ui as fallback.

--get-color name [default]

Find the color configured for name (e.g. color.diff.new) and output it as the ANSI color escape sequence to the standard output. The optional default parameter is used instead, if there is no color configured for name.

-e
--edit

Opens an editor to modify the specified config file; either --system, --global, or repository (default).

--[no-]includes

Respect include.* directives in config files when looking up values. Defaults to off when a specific file is given (e.g., using --file, --global, etc) and on when searching all config files.

FILES

If not set explicitly with --file, there are four files where git config will search for configuration options:

$(prefix)/etc/gitconfig

System-wide configuration file.

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config

Second user-specific configuration file. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set or empty, $HOME/.config/git/config will be used. Any single-valued variable set in this file will be overwritten by whatever is in ~/.gitconfig. It is a good idea not to create this file if you sometimes use older versions of Git, as support for this file was added fairly recently.

~/.gitconfig

User-specific configuration file. Also called "global" configuration file.

$GIT_DIR/config

Repository specific configuration file.

If no further options are given, all reading options will read all of these files that are available. If the global or the system-wide configuration file are not available they will be ignored. If the repository configuration file is not available or readable, git config will exit with a non-zero error code. However, in neither case will an error message be issued.

The files are read in the order given above, with last value found taking precedence over values read earlier. When multiple values are taken then all values of a key from all files will be used.

All writing options will per default write to the repository specific configuration file. Note that this also affects options like --replace-all and --unset. git config will only ever change one file at a time.

You can override these rules either by command-line options or by environment variables. The --global and the --system options will limit the file used to the global or system-wide file respectively. The GIT_CONFIG environment variable has a similar effect, but you can specify any filename you want.

ENVIRONMENT

GIT_CONFIG

Take the configuration from the given file instead of .git/config. Using the "--global" option forces this to ~/.gitconfig. Using the "--system" option forces this to $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig.

GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM

Whether to skip reading settings from the system-wide $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig file. See git[1] for details.

See also FILES.

EXAMPLES

Given a .git/config like this:

#
# This is the config file, and
# a '#' or ';' character indicates
# a comment
#
; core variables
[core]
	; Don't trust file modes
	filemode = false
; Our diff algorithm
[diff]
	external = /usr/local/bin/diff-wrapper
	renames = true
; Proxy settings
[core]
	gitproxy=proxy-command for kernel.org
	gitproxy=default-proxy ; for all the rest
; HTTP
[http]
	sslVerify
[http "https://weak.example.com"]
	sslVerify = false
	cookieFile = /tmp/cookie.txt

you can set the filemode to true with

% git config core.filemode true

The hypothetical proxy command entries actually have a postfix to discern what URL they apply to. Here is how to change the entry for kernel.org to "ssh".

% git config core.gitproxy '"ssh" for kernel.org' 'for kernel.org$'

This makes sure that only the key/value pair for kernel.org is replaced.

To delete the entry for renames, do

% git config --unset diff.renames

If you want to delete an entry for a multivar (like core.gitproxy above), you have to provide a regex matching the value of exactly one line.

To query the value for a given key, do

% git config --get core.filemode

or

% git config core.filemode

or, to query a multivar:

% git config --get core.gitproxy "for kernel.org$"

If you want to know all the values for a multivar, do:

% git config --get-all core.gitproxy

If you like to live dangerously, you can replace all core.gitproxy by a new one with

% git config --replace-all core.gitproxy ssh

However, if you really only want to replace the line for the default proxy, i.e. the one without a "for …​" postfix, do something like this:

% git config core.gitproxy ssh '! for '

To actually match only values with an exclamation mark, you have to

% git config section.key value '[!]'

To add a new proxy, without altering any of the existing ones, use

% git config --add core.gitproxy '"proxy-command" for example.com'

An example to use customized color from the configuration in your script:

#!/bin/sh
WS=$(git config --get-color color.diff.whitespace "blue reverse")
RESET=$(git config --get-color "" "reset")
echo "${WS}your whitespace color or blue reverse${RESET}"

For URLs in https://weak.example.com, http.sslVerify is set to false, while it is set to true for all others:

% git config --bool --get-urlmatch http.sslverify https://good.example.com
true
% git config --bool --get-urlmatch http.sslverify https://weak.example.com
false
% git config --get-urlmatch http https://weak.example.com
http.cookieFile /tmp/cookie.txt
http.sslverify false

CONFIGURATION FILE

The Git configuration file contains a number of variables that affect the Git commands' behavior. The .git/config file in each repository is used to store the configuration for that repository, and $HOME/.gitconfig is used to store a per-user configuration as fallback values for the .git/config file. The file /etc/gitconfig can be used to store a system-wide default configuration.

The configuration variables are used by both the Git plumbing and the porcelains. The variables are divided into sections, wherein the fully qualified variable name of 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, allow only alphanumeric characters and -, and must start with an alphabetic character. Some variables may appear multiple times; we say then that the variable is multivalued.

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 case-insensitive. Only alphanumeric characters, - and . are allowed in section names. Each variable must belong to some section, which means that there must be a section header before the 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 the example below:

	[section "subsection"]

Subsection names are case sensitive and can contain any characters except newline (doublequote " and backslash can be included by escaping them as \" and \\, respectively). Section headers 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 a deprecated [section.subsection] syntax. With this syntax, the subsection name is converted to lower-case and is also compared case sensitively. These subsection names follow the same restrictions as section names.

All the other lines (and the remainder of the line after the section header) are recognized as setting variables, in the form name = value (or just name, which is a short-hand to say that the variable is the boolean "true"). The variable names are case-insensitive, allow only alphanumeric characters and -, and must start with an alphabetic character.

A line that defines a value can be continued to the next line by ending it with a \; the backquote and the end-of-line are stripped. Leading whitespaces after name =, the remainder of the line after the first comment character # or ;, and trailing whitespaces of the line are discarded unless they are enclosed in double quotes. Internal whitespaces within the value are retained verbatim.

Inside double quotes, double quote " and backslash \ characters 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). Other char escape sequences (including octal escape sequences) are invalid.

Includes

You can include one config file from another by setting the special include.path variable to the name of the file to be included. The variable takes a pathname as its value, and is subject to tilde expansion.

The included file is expanded immediately, as if its contents had been found at the location of the include directive. If the value of the include.path variable is a relative path, the path is considered to be relative to the configuration file in which the include directive was found. See below for examples.

Example

# Core variables
[core]
	; Don't trust file modes
	filemode = false
# Our diff algorithm
[diff]
	external = /usr/local/bin/diff-wrapper
	renames = true
[branch "devel"]
	remote = origin
	merge = refs/heads/devel
# Proxy settings
[core]
	gitProxy="ssh" for "kernel.org"
	gitProxy=default-proxy ; for the rest
[include]
	path = /path/to/foo.inc ; include by absolute path
	path = foo ; expand "foo" relative to the current file
	path = ~/foo ; expand "foo" in your `$HOME` directory

Values

Values of many variables are treated as a simple string, but there are variables that take values of specific types and there are rules as to how to spell them.

boolean

When a variable is said to take a boolean value, many synonyms are accepted for true and false; these are all case-insensitive.

true

Boolean true can be spelled as yes, on, true, or 1. Also, a variable defined without = <value> is taken as true.

false

Boolean false can be spelled as no, off, false, or 0.

When converting value to the canonical form using --bool type specifier; git config will ensure that the output is "true" or "false" (spelled in lowercase).

integer

The value for many variables that specify various sizes can be suffixed with k, M,…​ to mean "scale the number by 1024", "by 1024x1024", etc.

color

The value for a variables that takes a color 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. Attributes may be turned off specifically by prefixing them with no (e.g., noreverse, noul, etc).

Colors (foreground and background) may also be given as numbers between 0 and 255; these use ANSI 256-color mode (but note that not all terminals may support this). If your terminal supports it, you may also specify 24-bit RGB values as hex, like #ff0ab3.

The attributes are meant to be reset at the beginning of each item in the colored output, so setting color.decorate.branch to black will paint that branch name in a plain black, even if the previous thing on the same output line (e.g. opening parenthesis before the list of branch names in log --decorate output) is set to be painted with bold or some other attribute.

pathname

A variable that takes a pathname value can be given a string that begins with "~/" or "~user/", and the usual tilde expansion happens to such a string: ~/ is expanded to the value of $HOME, and ~user/ to the specified user’s home directory.

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.

Other git-related tools may and do use their own variables. When inventing new variables for use in your own tool, make sure their names do not conflict with those that are used by Git itself and other popular tools, and describe them in your documentation.

advice.*

These variables control various optional help messages designed to aid new users. All advice.* variables default to true, and you can tell Git that you do not need help by setting these to false:

pushUpdateRejected

Set this variable to false if you want to disable pushNonFFCurrent, pushNonFFMatching, pushAlreadyExists, pushFetchFirst, and pushNeedsForce simultaneously.

pushNonFFCurrent

Advice shown when git-push[1] fails due to a non-fast-forward update to the current branch.

pushNonFFMatching

Advice shown when you ran git-push[1] and pushed matching refs explicitly (i.e. you used :, or specified a refspec that isn’t your current branch) and it resulted in a non-fast-forward error.

pushAlreadyExists

Shown when git-push[1] rejects an update that does not qualify for fast-forwarding (e.g., a tag.)

pushFetchFirst

Shown when git-push[1] rejects an update that tries to overwrite a remote ref that points at an object we do not have.

pushNeedsForce

Shown when git-push[1] rejects an update that tries to overwrite a remote ref that points at an object that is not a commit-ish, or make the remote ref point at an object that is not a commit-ish.

statusHints

Show directions on how to proceed from the current state in the output of git-status[1], in the template shown when writing commit messages in git-commit[1], and in the help message shown by git-checkout[1] when switching branch.

statusUoption

Advise to consider using the -u option to git-status[1] when the command takes more than 2 seconds to enumerate untracked files.

commitBeforeMerge

Advice shown when git-merge[1] refuses to merge to avoid overwriting local changes.

resolveConflict

Advice shown by various commands when conflicts prevent the operation from being performed.

implicitIdentity

Advice on how to set your identity configuration when your information is guessed from the system username and domain name.

detachedHead

Advice shown when you used git-checkout[1] to move to the detach HEAD state, to instruct how to create a local branch after the fact.

amWorkDir

Advice that shows the location of the patch file when git-am[1] fails to apply it.

rmHints

In case of failure in the output of git-rm[1], show directions on how to proceed from the current state.

core.fileMode

Tells Git if the executable bit of files in the working tree is to be honored.

Some filesystems lose the executable bit when a file that is marked as executable is checked out, or checks out an non-executable file with executable bit on. git-clone[1] or git-init[1] probe the filesystem to see if it handles the executable bit correctly and this variable is automatically set as necessary.

A repository, however, may be on a filesystem that handles the filemode correctly, and this variable is set to true when created, but later may be made accessible from another environment that loses the filemode (e.g. exporting ext4 via CIFS mount, visiting a Cygwin created repository with Git for Windows or Eclipse). In such a case it may be necessary to set this variable to false. See git-update-index[1].

The default is true (when core.filemode is not specified in the config file).

core.hideDotFiles

(Windows-only) If true, mark newly-created directories and files whose name starts with a dot as hidden. If dotGitOnly, only the .git/ directory is hidden, but no other files starting with a dot. The default mode is dotGitOnly.

core.ignoreCase

If true, this option enables various workarounds to enable Git to work better on filesystems that are not case sensitive, like FAT. For example, if a directory listing finds "makefile" when Git expects "Makefile", Git will assume it is really the same file, and continue to remember it as "Makefile".

The default is false, except git-clone[1] or git-init[1] will probe and set core.ignoreCase true if appropriate when the repository is created.

core.precomposeUnicode

This option is only used by Mac OS implementation of Git. When core.precomposeUnicode=true, Git reverts the unicode decomposition of filenames done by Mac OS. This is useful when sharing a repository between Mac OS and Linux or Windows. (Git for Windows 1.7.10 or higher is needed, or Git under cygwin 1.7). When false, file names are handled fully transparent by Git, which is backward compatible with older versions of Git.

core.protectHFS

If set to true, do not allow checkout of paths that would be considered equivalent to .git on an HFS+ filesystem. Defaults to true on Mac OS, and false elsewhere.

core.protectNTFS

If set to true, do not allow checkout of paths that would cause problems with the NTFS filesystem, e.g. conflict with 8.3 "short" names. Defaults to true on Windows, and false elsewhere.

core.trustctime

If false, the ctime differences between the index and the working tree are ignored; useful when the inode change time is regularly modified by something outside Git (file system crawlers and some backup systems). See git-update-index[1]. True by default.

core.untrackedCache

Determines what to do about the untracked cache feature of the index. It will be kept, if this variable is unset or set to keep. It will automatically be added if set to true. And it will automatically be removed, if set to false. Before setting it to true, you should check that mtime is working properly on your system. See git-update-index[1]. keep by default.

core.checkStat

Determines which stat fields to match between the index and work tree. The user can set this to default or minimal. Default (or explicitly default), is to check all fields, including the sub-second part of mtime and ctime.

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.eol

Sets the line ending type to use in the working directory for files that have the text property set when core.autocrlf is false. Alternatives are lf, crlf and native, which uses the platform’s native line ending. The default value is native. See gitattributes[5] for more information on end-of-line conversion.

core.safecrlf

If true, makes Git check if converting CRLF is reversible when end-of-line conversion is active. Git will verify if a command modifies a file in the work tree either directly or indirectly. For example, committing a file followed by checking out the same file should yield the original file in the work tree. If this is not the case for the current setting of core.autocrlf, Git will reject the file. The variable can be set to "warn", in which case Git will only warn about an irreversible conversion but continue the operation.

CRLF conversion bears a slight chance of corrupting data. When it is enabled, Git will convert CRLF to LF during commit and LF to CRLF during checkout. A file that contains a mixture of LF and CRLF before the commit cannot be recreated by Git. For text files this is the right thing to do: it corrects line endings such that we have only LF line endings in the repository. But for binary files that are accidentally classified as text the conversion can corrupt data.

If you recognize such corruption early you can easily fix it by setting the conversion type explicitly in .gitattributes. Right after committing you still have the original file in your work tree and this file is not yet corrupted. You can explicitly tell Git that this file is binary and Git will handle the file appropriately.

Unfortunately, the desired effect of cleaning up text files with mixed line endings and the undesired effect of corrupting binary files cannot be distinguished. In both cases CRLFs are removed in an irreversible way. For text files this is the right thing to do because CRLFs are line endings, while for binary files converting CRLFs corrupts data.

Note, this safety check does not mean that a checkout will generate a file identical to the original file for a different setting of core.eol and core.autocrlf, but only for the current one. For example, a text file with LF would be accepted with core.eol=lf and could later be checked out with core.eol=crlf, in which case the resulting file would contain CRLF, although the original file contained LF. However, in both work trees the line endings would be consistent, that is either all LF or all CRLF, but never mixed. A file with mixed line endings would be reported by the core.safecrlf mechanism.

core.autocrlf

Setting this variable to "true" is almost the same as setting the text attribute to "auto" on all files except that text files are not guaranteed to be normalized: files that contain CRLF in the repository will not be touched. Use this setting if you want to have CRLF line endings in your working directory even though the repository does not have normalized line endings. This variable can be set to input, in which case no output conversion is performed.

If false, symbolic links are checked out as small plain files that contain the link text. git-update-index[1] and git-add[1] will not change the recorded type to regular file. Useful on filesystems like FAT that do not support symbolic links.

The default is true, except git-clone[1] or git-init[1] will probe and set core.symlinks false if appropriate when the repository is created.

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).

The special string none can be used as the proxy command to specify that no proxy be used for a given domain pattern. This is useful for excluding servers inside a firewall from proxy use, while defaulting to a common proxy for external domains.

core.ignoreStat

If true, Git will avoid using lstat() calls to detect if files have changed by setting the "assume-unchanged" bit for those tracked files which it has updated identically in both the index and working tree.

When files are modified outside of Git, the user will need to stage the modified files explicitly (e.g. see Examples section in git-update-index[1]). Git will not normally detect changes to those files.

This is useful on systems where lstat() calls are very slow, such as CIFS/Microsoft Windows.

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 git-add[1] or git-merge[1].

This setting is automatically guessed by git-clone[1] or 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 root of the working tree. If GIT_COMMON_DIR environment variable is set, core.worktree is ignored and not used for determining the root of working tree. This can be overridden by the GIT_WORK_TREE environment variable and the --work-tree command-line option. The value can be an absolute path or relative to the path to the .git directory, which is either specified by --git-dir or GIT_DIR, or automatically discovered. If --git-dir or GIT_DIR is specified but none of --work-tree, GIT_WORK_TREE and core.worktree is specified, the current working directory is regarded as the top level of your working tree.

Note that this variable is honored even when set in a configuration file in a ".git" subdirectory of a directory and its value differs from the latter directory (e.g. "/path/to/.git/config" has core.worktree set to "/different/path"), which is most likely a misconfiguration. Running Git commands in the "/path/to" directory will still use "/different/path" as the root of the work tree and can cause confusion unless you know what you are doing (e.g. you are creating a read-only snapshot of the same index to a location different from the repository’s usual working tree).

core.logAllRefUpdates

Enable the reflog. Updates to a ref <ref> is logged to the file "$GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>", by appending the new and old SHA-1, the date/time and the reason of the update, but only when the file exists. If this configuration variable is set to true, missing "$GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>" file is automatically created for branch heads (i.e. under refs/heads/), remote refs (i.e. under refs/remotes/), note refs (i.e. under refs/notes/), and the symbolic ref HEAD.

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). When 0xxx, where 0xxx is an octal number, files in the repository will have this mode value. 0xxx will override user’s umask value (whereas the other options will only override requested parts of the user’s umask value). Examples: 0660 will make the repo read/write-able for the owner and group, but inaccessible to others (equivalent to group unless umask is e.g. 0022). 0640 is a repository that is group-readable but not group-writable. See 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 repository. 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. If set, this provides a default to other compression variables, such as core.looseCompression and pack.compression.

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 1 (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 may be referenced by multiple deltified objects. 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 96 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.bigFileThreshold

Files larger than this size are stored deflated, without attempting delta compression. Storing large files without delta compression avoids excessive memory usage, at the slight expense of increased disk usage. Additionally files larger than this size are always treated as binary.

Default is 512 MiB on all platforms. This should be reasonable for most projects as source code and other text files can still be delta compressed, but larger binary media files won’t be.

Common unit suffixes of k, m, or g are supported.

core.excludesFile

Specifies the pathname to the file that contains patterns to describe paths that are not meant to be tracked, in addition to .gitignore (per-directory) and .git/info/exclude. Defaults to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or empty, $HOME/.config/git/ignore is used instead. See gitignore[5].

core.askPass

Some commands (e.g. svn and http interfaces) that interactively ask for a password can be told to use an external program given via the value of this variable. Can be overridden by the GIT_ASKPASS environment variable. If not set, fall back to the value of the SSH_ASKPASS environment variable or, failing that, a simple password prompt. The external program shall be given a suitable prompt as command-line argument and write the password on its STDOUT.

core.attributesFile

In addition to .gitattributes (per-directory) and .git/info/attributes, Git looks into this file for attributes (see gitattributes[5]). Path expansions are made the same way as for core.excludesFile. Its default value is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/attributes. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or empty, $HOME/.config/git/attributes is used instead.

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. See git-var[1].

core.commentChar

Commands such as commit and tag that lets you edit messages consider a line that begins with this character commented, and removes them after the editor returns (default #).

If set to "auto", git-commit would select a character that is not the beginning character of any line in existing commit messages.

core.packedRefsTimeout

The length of time, in milliseconds, to retry when trying to lock the packed-refs file. Value 0 means not to retry at all; -1 means to try indefinitely. Default is 1000 (i.e., retry for 1 second).

sequence.editor

Text editor used by git rebase -i for editing the rebase instruction file. The value is meant to be interpreted by the shell when it is used. It can be overridden by the GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR environment variable. When not configured the default commit message editor is used instead.

core.pager

Text viewer for use by Git commands (e.g., less). The value is meant to be interpreted by the shell. The order of preference is the $GIT_PAGER environment variable, then core.pager configuration, then $PAGER, and then the default chosen at compile time (usually less).

When the LESS environment variable is unset, Git sets it to FRX (if LESS environment variable is set, Git does not change it at all). If you want to selectively override Git’s default setting for LESS, you can set core.pager to e.g. less -S. This will be passed to the shell by Git, which will translate the final command to LESS=FRX less -S. The environment does not set the S option but the command line does, instructing less to truncate long lines. Similarly, setting core.pager to less -+F will deactivate the F option specified by the environment from the command-line, deactivating the "quit if one screen" behavior of less. One can specifically activate some flags for particular commands: for example, setting pager.blame to less -S enables line truncation only for git blame.

Likewise, when the LV environment variable is unset, Git sets it to -c. You can override this setting by exporting LV with another value or setting core.pager to lv +c.

core.whitespace

A comma separated list of common whitespace problems to notice. git diff will use color.diff.whitespace to highlight them, and git apply --whitespace=error will consider them as errors. You can prefix - to disable any of them (e.g. -trailing-space):

  • blank-at-eol treats trailing whitespaces at the end of the line as an error (enabled by default).

  • space-before-tab treats a space character that appears immediately before a tab character in the initial indent part of the line as an error (enabled by default).

  • indent-with-non-tab treats a line that is indented with space characters instead of the equivalent tabs as an error (not enabled by default).

  • tab-in-indent treats a tab character in the initial indent part of the line as an error (not enabled by default).

  • blank-at-eof treats blank lines added at the end of file as an error (enabled by default).

  • trailing-space is a short-hand to cover both blank-at-eol and blank-at-eof.

  • cr-at-eol treats a carriage-return at the end of line as part of the line terminator, i.e. with it, trailing-space does not trigger if the character before such a carriage-return is not a whitespace (not enabled by default).

  • tabwidth=<n> tells how many character positions a tab occupies; this is relevant for indent-with-non-tab and when Git fixes tab-in-indent errors. The default tab width is 8. Allowed values are 1 to 63.

core.fsyncObjectFiles

This boolean will enable fsync() when writing object files.

This is a total waste of time and effort on a filesystem that orders data writes properly, but can be useful for filesystems that do not use journalling (traditional UNIX filesystems) or that only journal metadata and not file contents (OS X’s HFS+, or Linux ext3 with "data=writeback").

core.preloadIndex

Enable parallel index preload for operations like git diff

This can speed up operations like git diff and git status especially on filesystems like NFS that have weak caching semantics and thus relatively high IO latencies. When enabled, Git will do the index comparison to the filesystem data in parallel, allowing overlapping IO’s. Defaults to true.

core.createObject

You can set this to link, in which case a hardlink followed by a delete of the source are used to make sure that object creation will not overwrite existing objects.

On some file system/operating system combinations, this is unreliable. Set this config setting to rename there; However, This will remove the check that makes sure that existing object files will not get overwritten.

core.notesRef

When showing commit messages, also show notes which are stored in the given ref. The ref must be fully qualified. If the given ref does not exist, it is not an error but means that no notes should be printed.

This setting defaults to "refs/notes/commits", and it can be overridden by the GIT_NOTES_REF environment variable. See git-notes[1].

core.sparseCheckout

Enable "sparse checkout" feature. See section "Sparse checkout" in git-read-tree[1] for more information.

core.abbrev

Set the length object names are abbreviated to. If unspecified, many commands abbreviate to 7 hexdigits, which may not be enough for abbreviated object names to stay unique for sufficiently long time.

add.ignoreErrors
add.ignore-errors (deprecated)

Tells git add to continue adding files when some files cannot be added due to indexing errors. Equivalent to the --ignore-errors option of git-add[1]. add.ignore-errors is deprecated, as it does not follow the usual naming convention for configuration variables.

alias.*

Command aliases for the 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. A quote pair or 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". Note that shell commands will be executed from the top-level directory of a repository, which may not necessarily be the current directory. GIT_PREFIX is set as returned by running git rev-parse --show-prefix from the original current directory. See git-rev-parse[1].

am.keepcr

If true, git-am will call git-mailsplit for patches in mbox format with parameter --keep-cr. In this case git-mailsplit will not remove \r from lines ending with \r\n. Can be overridden by giving --no-keep-cr from the command line. See git-am[1], git-mailsplit[1].

am.threeWay

By default, git am will fail if the patch does not apply cleanly. When set to true, this setting tells git am to fall back on 3-way merge if the patch records the identity of blobs it is supposed to apply to and we have those blobs available locally (equivalent to giving the --3way option from the command line). Defaults to false. See git-am[1].

apply.ignoreWhitespace

When set to change, tells git apply to ignore changes in whitespace, in the same way as the --ignore-space-change option. When set to one of: no, none, never, false tells git apply to respect all whitespace differences. See git-apply[1].

apply.whitespace

Tells git apply how to handle whitespaces, in the same way as the --whitespace option. See git-apply[1].

branch.autoSetupMerge

Tells git branch and git checkout to set up new branches so that git-pull[1] will appropriately merge from the starting point branch. Note that even if this option is not set, this behavior can be chosen per-branch using the --track and --no-track options. The valid settings are: false — no automatic setup is done; true — automatic setup is done when the starting point is a remote-tracking branch; always — automatic setup is done when the starting point is either a local branch or remote-tracking branch. This option defaults to true.

branch.autoSetupRebase

When a new branch is created with git branch or git checkout that tracks another branch, this variable tells Git to set up pull to rebase instead of merge (see "branch.<name>.rebase"). When never, rebase is never automatically set to true. When local, rebase is set to true for tracked branches of other local branches. When remote, rebase is set to true for tracked branches of remote-tracking branches. When always, rebase will be set to true for all tracking branches. See "branch.autoSetupMerge" for details on how to set up a branch to track another branch. This option defaults to never.

branch.<name>.remote

When on branch <name>, it tells git fetch and git push which remote to fetch from/push to. The remote to push to may be overridden with remote.pushDefault (for all branches). The remote to push to, for the current branch, may be further overridden by branch.<name>.pushRemote. If no remote is configured, or if you are not on any branch, it defaults to origin for fetching and remote.pushDefault for pushing. Additionally, . (a period) is the current local repository (a dot-repository), see branch.<name>.merge's final note below.

branch.<name>.pushRemote

When on branch <name>, it overrides branch.<name>.remote for pushing. It also overrides remote.pushDefault for pushing from branch <name>. When you pull from one place (e.g. your upstream) and push to another place (e.g. your own publishing repository), you would want to set remote.pushDefault to specify the remote to push to for all branches, and use this option to override it for a specific branch.

branch.<name>.merge

Defines, together with branch.<name>.remote, the upstream branch for the given branch. It tells git fetch/git pull/git rebase which branch to merge and can also affect git push (see push.default). When in branch <name>, it tells git fetch the default refspec to be marked for merging in FETCH_HEAD. The value is handled like the remote part of a refspec, and must match a ref which is 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 relative path setting . (a period) for branch.<name>.remote.

branch.<name>.mergeOptions

Sets default options for merging into branch <name>. The syntax and supported options are the same as those of git-merge[1], but option values containing whitespace characters are currently not supported.

branch.<name>.rebase

When true, rebase the branch <name> on top of the fetched branch, instead of merging the default branch from the default remote when "git pull" is run. See "pull.rebase" for doing this in a non branch-specific manner.

When preserve, also pass --preserve-merges along to git rebase so that locally committed merge commits will not be flattened by running git pull.

When the value is interactive, the rebase is run in interactive mode.

NOTE: this is a possibly dangerous operation; do not use it unless you understand the implications (see git-rebase[1] for details).

branch.<name>.description

Branch description, can be edited with git branch --edit-description. Branch description is automatically added in the format-patch cover letter or request-pull summary.

browser.<tool>.cmd

Specify the command to invoke the specified browser. The specified command is evaluated in shell with the URLs passed as arguments. (See git-web--browse[1].)

browser.<tool>.path

Override the path for the given tool that may be used to browse HTML help (see -w option in git-help[1]) or a working repository in gitweb (see git-instaweb[1]).

clean.requireForce

A boolean to make git-clean do nothing unless given -f, -i or -n. Defaults to true.

color.branch

A boolean to enable/disable color in the output of git-branch[1]. May be set to always, false (or never) or auto (or true), 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 remote-tracking branch in refs/remotes/), upstream (upstream tracking branch), plain (other refs).

color.diff

Whether to use ANSI escape sequences to add color to patches. If this is set to always, git-diff[1], git-log[1], and git-show[1] will use color for all patches. If it is set to true or auto, those commands will only use color when output is to the terminal. Defaults to false.

This does not affect git-format-patch[1] or the git-diff-* plumbing commands. Can be overridden on the command line with the --color[=<when>] option.

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 context (context text - plain is a historical synonym), meta (metainformation), frag (hunk header), func (function in hunk header), old (removed lines), new (added lines), commit (commit headers), or whitespace (highlighting whitespace errors).

color.decorate.<slot>

Use customized color for git log --decorate output. <slot> is one of branch, remoteBranch, tag, stash or HEAD for local branches, remote-tracking branches, tags, stash and HEAD, respectively.

color.grep

When set to always, always highlight matches. When false (or never), never. When set to true or auto, use color only when the output is written to the terminal. Defaults to false.

color.grep.<slot>

Use customized color for grep colorization. <slot> specifies which part of the line to use the specified color, and is one of

context

non-matching text in context lines (when using -A, -B, or -C)

filename

filename prefix (when not using -h)

function

function name lines (when using -p)

linenumber

line number prefix (when using -n)

match

matching text (same as setting matchContext and matchSelected)

matchContext

matching text in context lines

matchSelected

matching text in selected lines

selected

non-matching text in selected lines

separator

separators between fields on a line (:, -, and =) and between hunks (--)

color.interactive

When set to always, always use colors for interactive prompts and displays (such as those used by "git-add --interactive" and "git-clean --interactive"). When false (or never), never. When set to true or auto, use colors only when the output is to the terminal. Defaults to false.

color.interactive.<slot>

Use customized color for git add --interactive and git clean --interactive output. <slot> may be prompt, header, help or error, for four distinct types of normal output from interactive commands.

color.pager

A boolean to enable/disable colored output when the pager is in use (default is true).

color.showBranch

A boolean to enable/disable color in the output of git-show-branch[1]. May be set to always, false (or never) or auto (or true), in which case colors are used only when the output is to a terminal. Defaults to false.

color.status

A boolean to enable/disable color in the output of git-status[1]. May be set to always, false (or never) or auto (or true), 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), untracked (files which are not tracked by Git), branch (the current branch), nobranch (the color the no branch warning is shown in, defaulting to red), or unmerged (files which have unmerged changes).

color.ui

This variable determines the default value for variables such as color.diff and color.grep that control the use of color per command family. Its scope will expand as more commands learn configuration to set a default for the --color option. Set it to false or never if you prefer Git commands not to use color unless enabled explicitly with some other configuration or the --color option. Set it to always if you want all output not intended for machine consumption to use color, to true or auto (this is the default since Git 1.8.4) if you want such output to use color when written to the terminal.

column.ui

Specify whether supported commands should output in columns. This variable consists of a list of tokens separated by spaces or commas:

These options control when the feature should be enabled (defaults to never):

always

always show in columns

never

never show in columns

auto

show in columns if the output is to the terminal

These options control layout (defaults to column). Setting any of these implies always if none of always, never, or auto are specified.

column

fill columns before rows

row

fill rows before columns

plain

show in one column

Finally, these options can be combined with a layout option (defaults to nodense):

dense

make unequal size columns to utilize more space

nodense

make equal size columns

column.branch

Specify whether to output branch listing in git branch in columns. See column.ui for details.

column.clean

Specify the layout when list items in git clean -i, which always shows files and directories in columns. See column.ui for details.

column.status

Specify whether to output untracked files in git status in columns. See column.ui for details.

column.tag

Specify whether to output tag listing in git tag in columns. See column.ui for details.

commit.cleanup

This setting overrides the default of the --cleanup option in git commit. See git-commit[1] for details. Changing the default can be useful when you always want to keep lines that begin with comment character # in your log message, in which case you would do git config commit.cleanup whitespace (note that you will have to remove the help lines that begin with # in the commit log template yourself, if you do this).

commit.gpgSign

A boolean to specify whether all commits should be GPG signed. Use of this option when doing operations such as rebase can result in a large number of commits being signed. It may be convenient to use an agent to avoid typing your GPG passphrase several times.

commit.status

A boolean to enable/disable inclusion of status information in the commit message template when using an editor to prepare the commit message. Defaults to true.

commit.template

Specify the pathname of a file to use as the template for new commit messages.

credential.helper

Specify an external helper to be called when a username or password credential is needed; the helper may consult external storage to avoid prompting the user for the credentials. See gitcredentials[7] for details.

credential.useHttpPath

When acquiring credentials, consider the "path" component of an http or https URL to be important. Defaults to false. See gitcredentials[7] for more information.

credential.username

If no username is set for a network authentication, use this username by default. See credential.<context>.* below, and gitcredentials[7].

credential.<url>.*

Any of the credential.* options above can be applied selectively to some credentials. For example "credential.https://example.com.username" would set the default username only for https connections to example.com. See gitcredentials[7] for details on how URLs are matched.

credentialCache.ignoreSIGHUP

Tell git-credential-cache—​daemon to ignore SIGHUP, instead of quitting.

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.dirstat

A comma separated list of --dirstat parameters specifying the default behavior of the --dirstat option to git-diff[1]` and friends. The defaults can be overridden on the command line (using --dirstat=<param1,param2,...>). The fallback defaults (when not changed by diff.dirstat) are changes,noncumulative,3. The following parameters are available:

changes

Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have been removed from the source, or added to the destination. This ignores the amount of pure code movements within a file. In other words, rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much as other changes. This is the default behavior when no parameter is given.

lines

Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based diff analysis, and summing the removed/added line counts. (For binary files, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary files have no natural concept of lines). This is a more expensive --dirstat behavior than the changes behavior, but it does count rearranged lines within a file as much as other changes. The resulting output is consistent with what you get from the other --*stat options.

files

Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files changed. Each changed file counts equally in the dirstat analysis. This is the computationally cheapest --dirstat behavior, since it does not have to look at the file contents at all.

cumulative

Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well. Note that when using cumulative, the sum of the percentages reported may exceed 100%. The default (non-cumulative) behavior can be specified with the noncumulative parameter.

<limit>

An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default). Directories contributing less than this percentage of the changes are not shown in the output.

Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring directories with less than 10% of the total amount of changed files, and accumulating child directory counts in the parent directories: files,10,cumulative.

diff.statGraphWidth

Limit the width of the graph part in --stat output. If set, applies to all commands generating --stat output except format-patch.

diff.context

Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the default of 3. This value is overridden by the -U option.

diff.external

If this config variable is set, diff generation is not performed using the internal diff machinery, but using the given command. Can be overridden with the ‘GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF’ environment variable. The command is called with parameters as described under "git Diffs" in git[1]. Note: if you want to use an external diff program only on a subset of your files, you might want to use gitattributes[5] instead.

diff.ignoreSubmodules

Sets the default value of --ignore-submodules. Note that this affects only git diff Porcelain, and not lower level diff commands such as git diff-files. git checkout also honors this setting when reporting uncommitted changes. Setting it to all disables the submodule summary normally shown by git commit and git status when status.submoduleSummary is set unless it is overridden by using the --ignore-submodules command-line option. The git submodule commands are not affected by this setting.

diff.mnemonicPrefix

If set, git diff uses a prefix pair that is different from the standard "a/" and "b/" depending on what is being compared. When this configuration is in effect, reverse diff output also swaps the order of the prefixes:

git diff

compares the (i)ndex and the (w)ork tree;

git diff HEAD

compares a (c)ommit and the (w)ork tree;

git diff --cached

compares a (c)ommit and the (i)ndex;

git diff HEAD:file1 file2

compares an (o)bject and a (w)ork tree entity;

git diff --no-index a b

compares two non-git things (1) and (2).

diff.noprefix

If set, git diff does not show any source or destination prefix.