.gitconfig not working even if i've configured correctly

Question

I've configured ~/.gitconfig correctly as below.

git config --global user.name "yuzhi"
git config --global user.email "1762266120@qq.com"

Here is the result.

saber@debian:~$ git config -l
user.name=yuzhi
user.email=1762266120@qq.com
core.editor=vim
color.ui=true

saber@debian:~$ git config --global -l
user.name=yuzhi
user.email=1762266120@qq.com
core.editor=vim
color.ui=true

What confuses me is that it does not work when i git commit.

saber@debian:~/ics2020$ sudo git commit

*** Please tell me who you are.

Run

  git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
  git config --global user.name "Your Name"

to set your account's default identity.
Omit --global to set the identity only in this repository.

fatal: unable to auto-detect email address (got 'root@debian.(none)')

But it works when i issue git commit after the commands below.

git config --local user.name "yuzhi"
git config --local user.email "1762266120@qq.com"

BTW: i'm running Debian-10.8 on the vmware. and git==2.20.1. here is the similar question as mine, but i don't know how to solve in linux.

Answer 1

You can compare (assuming a recent enough Git, if not: update it) configuration with:

git config --show-origin --show-scope -l
sudo git config --show-origin --show-scope -l

You will clearly see the difference in paths (/home/saber/ vs. /root), explaining why you don't see the same configuration.
That being said, as commented, don't use sudo for regular commands like git.

---

As noted in the comments, if the repository was initially created with sudo (generating files owned by root), the first commit (done with the regular user) will trigger:

saber@debian:~/ics2020$ git commit 
fatal: Unable to create '/home/saber/ics2020/.git/index.lock': Permission denied.

That means you need to restore the proper ownership:

cd ~/ics2020
sudo chown -R $(id -u saber):$(id -g saber)

Then a simple commit (without sudo) will work.