Windows-specific Git configuration settings; where are they set?

Question

I've read the Git documentation and Where do the settings in my Git configuration come from? and yet I still can't make sense of some of my settings.

I'm on Git 2.5.3 on Windows 10. Here's the output of git config -l:

λ git config -l
core.symlinks=false
core.autocrlf=true
color.diff=auto
color.status=auto
color.branch=auto
color.interactive=true
pack.packsizelimit=2g
help.format=html
http.sslcainfo=C:/Program Files/Git/mingw64/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt
sendemail.smtpserver=/bin/msmtp.exe
diff.astextplain.textconv=astextplain
rebase.autosquash=true
user.name=Ben Collins
user.email=#redacted#
alias.sm=submodule
alias.br=branch
alias.co=checkout
alias.st=status
alias.rebuild=!git rm --cached -r . && git reset --hard
core.excludesfile=C:\Users\Benjamin\Documents\gitignore_global.txt
core.editor=c:/Users/Benjamin/AppData/Local/atom/bin/atom.cmd
core.attributesfile=C:\Users\Benjamin\.gitattributes
push.default=simple
merge.tool=p4merge
mergetool.p4merge.cmd=p4merge.exe "$BASE" "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" "$MERGED"
mergetool.p4merge.path=C:/Program Files/Perforce/p4merge.exe
gui.encoding=utf-8
diff.guitool=p4merge
difftool.p4merge.path=C:/Program Files/Perforce/p4merge.exe
difftool.p4merge.cmd=p4merge.exe "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"
mergetool.keepbackup=false
rerere.enabled=true
credential.helper=!'C:\Users\Benjamin\AppData\Roaming\GitCredStore\git-credential-winstore.exe'
filter.lfs.clean=git lfs clean %f
filter.lfs.smudge=git lfs smudge %f
filter.lfs.required=true
color.diff.whitespace=red reverse

What's bothersome is that the first twelve settings I cannot find anywhere.

C:\Program Files\Git
λ git config --system --list
fatal: unable to read config file 'C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64/etc/gitconfig': No such file or directory
C:\Program Files\Git
λ git config --global --list
user.name=Ben Collins
user.email=#redacted#
alias.sm=submodule
alias.br=branch
alias.co=checkout
alias.st=status
alias.rebuild=!git rm --cached -r . && git reset --hard
core.excludesfile=C:\Users\Benjamin\Documents\gitignore_global.txt
core.editor=c:/Users/Benjamin/AppData/Local/atom/bin/atom.cmd
core.attributesfile=C:\Users\Benjamin\.gitattributes
push.default=simple
merge.tool=p4merge
mergetool.p4merge.cmd=p4merge.exe "$BASE" "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" "$MERGED"
mergetool.p4merge.path=C:/Program Files/Perforce/p4merge.exe
gui.encoding=utf-8
diff.guitool=p4merge
difftool.p4merge.path=C:/Program Files/Perforce/p4merge.exe
difftool.p4merge.cmd=p4merge.exe "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"
mergetool.keepbackup=false
rerere.enabled=true
credential.helper=!'C:\Users\Benjamin\AppData\Roaming\GitCredStore\git-credential-winstore.exe'
filter.lfs.clean=git lfs clean %f
filter.lfs.smudge=git lfs smudge %f
filter.lfs.required=true
color.diff.whitespace=red reverse

Also, when I try to unset one of the first twelve settings, it has no effect:

C:\Users\Benjamin\Projects\blah [master +0 ~1 -0]
λ git config --unset core.autocrlf
C:\Users\Benjamin\Projects\blah [master +0 ~1 -0]
λ git config core.autocrlf
true
C:\Users\Benjamin\Projects\Saddleback\cm-core [master +0 ~1 -0]
λ git config --unset-all core.autocrlf
C:\Users\Benjamin\Projects\Saddleback\cm-core [master +0 ~1 -0]
λ git config core.autocrlf
true

Are these first twelve settings hardcoded or platform-specific somehow? How do I get control of them?

Answer 1

TIL a caveat concerning Git for Widows. I have git version 2.17.1.windows.2.

I tried to set a global core.attributesfile to override the line-ending attributes for *.sh files (I use WSL, and the present version becomes very unhappy when it tries to run shell scripts with DOS (CRLF) line endings. For Git on the Linux side, the following lines in ~\.gitattributes solve the problem:

*.sln text eol=crlf
*.bat text eol=crlf
*.sh  text eol=cr

But using Git from Windows side (e.g. via Sourcetree GUI), for some repositories, I was still getting CRLF in *.sh files.

I found that in these repositories, core.autocrlf=true. Setting it to input solves the problem, and Git respects the global gitattributes now.

Answer 2

As this commit explains, they've added another config location only for Windows, which is applied even before the --system:

The file /etc/gitconfig can be used to store a system-wide default configuration. On Windows, configuration can also be stored in C:\ProgramData\Git\config; This file will be used also by libgit2-based software.

...

On Windows, as there is no central /etc/ directory, there is yet another config file, intended to contain settings for all Git-related software running on the machine. Consequently, this config file takes an even lower precedence than the $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig file.

So I believe you can find those mystery settings in C:\ProgramData\Git\config.

---

From that commit I can see that git config --system --list should've shown you those settings, but it seems that the absence of C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64/etc/gitconfig file aborted the operation, which is probably a bug.

Answer 3

In my version of git there is a --show-origin switch on the list command which gives away where the setting was applied from. I agree that it's confusing that there is no provided switch to access the windows configuration location inside ProgramData.

C:\Users\karlb>git --version
git version 2.11.0.windows.3

C:\Users\karlb>git config --list --show-origin
file:"C:\\ProgramData/Git/config"       core.symlinks=false
file:"C:\\ProgramData/Git/config"       core.autocrlf=true
file:"C:\\ProgramData/Git/config"       core.fscache=true
file:"C:\\ProgramData/Git/config"       color.diff=auto
file:"C:\\ProgramData/Git/config"       color.status=auto
file:"C:\\ProgramData/Git/config"       color.branch=auto
file:"C:\\ProgramData/Git/config"       color.interactive=true
file:"C:\\ProgramData/Git/config"       help.format=html
file:"C:\\ProgramData/Git/config"       http.sslcainfo=C:/Program Files/Git/mingw64/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt
file:"C:\\ProgramData/Git/config"       diff.astextplain.textconv=astextplain
file:"C:\\ProgramData/Git/config"       rebase.autosquash=true
file:"C:\\Program Files\\Git\\mingw64/etc/gitconfig"    credential.helper=manager
file:"C:\\Program Files\\Git\\mingw64/etc/gitconfig"    difftool.usebuiltin=true
file:"C:\\Program Files\\Git\\mingw64/etc/gitconfig"    alias.lol=log --oneline --graph
file:"C:\\Program Files\\Git\\mingw64/etc/gitconfig"    alias.last=log -1 HEAD
file:C:/Users/karlb/.gitconfig  user.email=karl.horton@yahoo.com
file:C:/Users/karlb/.gitconfig  user.name=Karl Horton