Git Options

The behavior of git commands can be influenced and controlled using so-called options.

Each option has a name which can be given a name

When running a command, the option can be specified with the -c parameter between git and the command name. In the following command, the option with the name user.name is given the value Hausi Peter while the command git commit is executed:

Storing options

The value of options can be stored so that commands can be entered without having to use the -c command line argument.

Scope of stored options

There are three scopes where options can be stored:

system wide,
per user (referred to as globally stored) and/or
per repository (referred to as locally stored).

If a value for an option is stored in multiple locations, the local value takes precedence. If no local option is available, the global one takes precedence. Options that are assigned a value with -c take precedence over all other locations.

Setting options

Options are set with git config.

git config does not check if the option name or value is valid. It is just a dumb frontend for storing or retrieving values.

The following command assigns the value false to the option named core.autocrlf in the current repository (locally stored).

Note that there is no equal sign to assign the value:

git config core.autocrlf false

This command assigns a value for the current user (globally stored):

git config --global user.name "René Nyffenegger"

Store an option for the entire system:

git config --system core.longpaths true

Option names

An option name contains at least one dot. The part before the first dot is the name of section to which the option belongs.

Trying to store a value without a dot results in an error:

$ git config  abc  val-one
error: key does not contain a section: abc

The following command stores the value val-two for the name nam in the section sec:

$ git config  sec.nam  val-two
$ cat .git/config
[core]
  …
[sec]
        nam = val-two

Using a name with two dots:

$ git config  sss.ttt.uuu  val-two
$ cat .git/config
[sec]
        nam = val-two
[sss "ttt"]
        uuu = val-two

List of all possible options

A list of options that are processed by one or more git commands can be obtained with

git help -c

Interesting options

Some interesting, IMHO, Git options include:

`branch.*`
`core.abbrev`
`core.autocrlf`	Should be set to `false` because it applies to all files, even binary ones and is local, not versionized in a repository. The `eol` directive in `.gitattributes` is therefore the preferred alternative.
`core.safecrlf`
`core.editor`	Names the editor with which commit and tag messages are composed. If not set, git will use value of environment variables `EDITOR` or `VISUAL`, if these variable are not set to `vi`.
`core.filemode`	If `true`, git will honor the executable bit of files (some filesystem don't have such a bit).
`core.hooksPath`	Set the (relative or absolute) location (directory) for Git hooks. Without this setting, git looks for hooks below `.git/hooks`.
`core.ignorecase`
`core.logallrefupdates`	Enables the reflog. Value can be set to `true` and `always`
`core.repositoryformatversion`	Every repository specifies a (local) value for `core.repositoryformatversion` which specifies what operations are allowed in a repository.
`core.symlinks`	If `true` (which is the default unless `git clone` or `git init` determines it should be `false`), symbolic link files will be checked as symlinks, otherwise as ordinary files containing the text. Setting this value to `false` is useful on filesystems like FAT.
`core.whitespace`	Specifies how and if whitespace problems should be notified
`credential.helper`	? Contains a path such as `credential.helper=!"C:/Users/rene/bin/git/mingw64/libexec/git-core/git-credential-manager-core.exe"`, a value such as `manager-core` or … ?
`credential.helperselector.selected`	The value of `credential.helperselector.selected` might be `manager-core`
`diff.tool`	Specify the default tool with which differences between commits are shown when using `git difftool`
`difftool.prompt`	`true` or (possibly better?) `false`. If `--false`, the command line option `--no-prompt` will be used when invoking `git difftool`.
`format.pretty`	The default pretty format for the `git log`, `git show` and `git whatchanged` commands.
`gc.reflogExpire`	Controls when reachable reflogs expire and get purged. Default is 90 days.
`gc.reflogExpireUnreachable`	Controls when unreachable reflogs expire and get purged. Default is 30 days.
`http.proxySSLCAInfo`	Name of the file (for example `C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\ssl\certs\ca-bundle.crt`) that contains the certificate with which a peer is verified in `git pull` or `git push` over HTTPS.
`init.templateDir`	Location of the template directory used by the `git init` command. `init.templateDir` has lower precedence than the environment variable `$GIT_TEMPLATE_DIR`.
`merge.renamelimit`
`pull.rebase`
`pull.ff`
`push.default`	Defines the action `git push` should take if no refspec is explicitly given. The value can be set to one of `nothing`, `current`, `upstream`, `simple` and `matching`. The default in Git 2 is `simple`.
`remote.origin.url`	Compare with `git remote get-url origin`
`safe.directory`
`user.email`	Used for committer information (`git commit`).
`user.name`	Used for committer information (`git commit`). Compare with `credential.username`.
`web.browser`	Used, for example(?) by `git web--browse`. One of the options that are very like set with the `--global` option of `git config`. See also browser related options