CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitubuntulinux-kernel
Sami
Sami

Reputation: 417

What should be the path of .gitconfig file in linux?

Hello can anyone tell me where the .gitconfig file reside, i mean what is the folder where this file should be stored. I am seeing the linux kernel tutorials from KernelNewbies at stuck where that file should reside. I am following this link http://kernelnewbies.org/FirstKernelPatch and under the heading setup git they tell me to make .gitconfig file now i dont know what should be the path.

Upvotes: 26

Views: 92825

Answers (2)

torek
torek

Reputation: 488183

There are three (or if you count --file, even four) places you can configure Git:

  • At the machine level: --system. Unless you are the system administrator, you do not want to use this one.
  • At the user-specific level: --global. This is the one you want here.
  • At the repository level: --local, or without any --whatever flag at all.

The actual location of the user-specific file varies: the most common place is your home directory (~ or $HOME) but there is this obnoxious XDG_HOME thing, and this other obnoxious thing called Windows :-) , that can mess with this. So an easy way to avoid having to know where the file lives is to use git config --global to set things.

My recommendation is to use git config --global core.editor name of your favorite editor first, then to use git config --edit to make sure that this actually works. For instance, if you prefer vim, run git config --global core.editor vim. If you prefer nano, run git config --global core.editor nano. If you like Emacs, or Notepad, or whatever, well, the pattern should be clear by now. :-)

Once you have set your core.editor, using --edit will make sure it really works, and you will be able to see the format for the settings file (it's basically an INI-style file). Make sure that whatever editor you use, it writes text files as ASCII if possible, or UTF-8 when needing auxiliary non-ASCII characters, not "RichText" and not UTF-16, and without using a pointless byte-order mark ("BOM"), as these will give Git heartburn.

Besides core.editor (which you do not have to set, I just recommend it), you must set:

and you probably should set:

  • core.pager "less -S"
  • color.branch auto
  • color.diff auto
  • diff.renames true (or even to copy)
  • diff.renameLimit 0
  • merge.conflictstyle diff3

although all of these are matters of taste.

Once you have your core.editor set, you can set these others with git config --global var.iable "value", or with git config --global --edit. The quotes here are needed only if the value is more than one word (contains whitespace) or needs other protection from the shell (has $ or * characters in it, for instance). (And: using --edit is particularly valuable when you have set something long and complicated, like an alias, and want to fix a small typo, or experiment, without having to re-enter the whole thing.)

Upvotes: 15

amacrobert
amacrobert

Reputation: 3149

Your global git configuration is written to ~/.gitconfig.

To override git configuration on a per-project basis, write to path/to/project/.git/config.

However, you don't have to edit configuration files directly. You can set global or local configuration variables on the command line. For example, to set the global user name, use git config --global user.name "your-username".

Upvotes: 41

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