Config your Git ⚙️

# List all variables set in your config file

git config --list

The git config command takes many options, and most guides on configuring Git will suggest using those commands. What I don’t like about running these, is how it obfuscates what they’re actually meddling with on my computer. I prefer to understand that I have a .gitconfig file, where it is (probably my home directory, unless I have saved it somewhere else) and how to open it, and frequently take a proper look so I can intentionally edit everything in there.

# Locate your config and see what you have in there

cat ~/.gitconfig

I have a dotfiles repo, so I can show my .gitconfig here:
github.com/elisabethirgens/dotfiles/blob/main/.gitconfig
Not that much stuff! but a couple of quirks I have gotten used to having set up.

Some ideas for things to config

Create a .gitignore_global and never again commit a .DS_Store ever
Set up your own .gitmsg with template for writing commit messages

Here is one of the advantages of having a dotfiles repo, I can later read (and also show you!) in the commit messages more context about the changes I made to my config. Examples:

Experiment with useConfigOnly for gitconfig: 21269f4
Add a template for writing commit messages: d00e728
Set up a working global gitignore: 98c3e1c

Deep dive 🐰🕳️

Julia Evans asked people about their favourite git config options

As usual I got a TON of great answers and learned about a bunch of very popular git config options that I’d never heard of.

and wrote this comprehensive post afterwards: Popular git config options

It was a little confusing to summarize these because git’s default options have actually changed a lot of the years, so people occasionally have options set that were important 8 years ago but today are the default.