CODEWITHSUNDEEP
githubgithub-for-windows
Sabuncu
Sabuncu

Reputation: 5264

Difference b/w Account vs "Configure git" section in the GitHub for Windows client

(Disclaimer: I am new to Git and GitHub.)

I am running 2.11.0.5 version of the GitHub Windows client. In the Options page (please see below), there is the Account information (my GitHub account), and below it, there is the "Configure git" section with fields for full name and e-mail.

Why is the "Configure git" section necessary if the Account information is already specified? (I tried to envision the one-to-many usage scenarios that might be active, but not knowing about GitHub, I don't understand this.)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 47

Answers (2)

Matt Ball
Matt Ball

Reputation: 359816

The note that says "This will change your global gitconfig" is a strong hint: those fields are for setting the user.name and user.email, which is part of every minimal git configuration.

The client could infer initial values from your GitHub account information, but the app authors evidently decided that it's preferable to explicitly ask you.

Your Identity

The first thing you should do when you install Git is to set your user name and e-mail address. This is important because every Git commit uses this information, and it’s immutably baked into the commits you start creating:

$ git config --global user.name "John Doe"
$ git config --global user.email [email protected]

Again, you need to do this only once if you pass the --global option, because then Git will always use that information for anything you do on that system. If you want to override this with a different name or e-mail address for specific projects, you can run the command without the --global option when you're in that project.

Many of the GUI tools will help you do this when you first run them.

http://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-First-Time-Git-Setup#Your-Identity

Upvotes: 1

dimm
dimm

Reputation: 1798

The git user and email are completely different from Github account.

Basically, Git stamps every commit with the user and email set with git config command (the fields in the red circle are for that command). Git does not know about passwords.

On the other hand, the Github account is just a secure way (with user and password) to access the remote repository on Github.

Upvotes: 1

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