NAME

git-config - Get and set repository or global options

SYNOPSIS

  1. git config [<file-option>] [--type=<type>] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] name [value [value_regex]]
  2. git config [<file-option>] [--type=<type>] --add name value
  3. git config [<file-option>] [--type=<type>] --replace-all name value [value_regex]
  4. git config [<file-option>] [--type=<type>] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] --get name [value_regex]
  5. git config [<file-option>] [--type=<type>] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] --get-all name [value_regex]
  6. git config [<file-option>] [--type=<type>] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] [--name-only] --get-regexp name_regex [value_regex]
  7. git config [<file-option>] [--type=<type>] [-z|--null] --get-urlmatch name URL
  8. git config [<file-option>] --unset name [value_regex]
  9. git config [<file-option>] --unset-all name [value_regex]
  10. git config [<file-option>] --rename-section old_name new_name
  11. git config [<file-option>] --remove-section name
  12. git config [<file-option>] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] [--name-only] -l | --list
  13. git config [<file-option>] --get-color name [default]
  14. git config [<file-option>] --get-colorbool name [stdout-is-tty]
  15. git config [<file-option>] -e | --edit

DESCRIPTION

You can query/set/replace/unset options with this command. The name isactually the section and the key separated by a dot, and the value will beescaped.

Multiple lines can be added to an option by using the —add option.If you want to update or unset an option which can occur on multiplelines, a POSIX regexp value_regex needs to be given. Only theexisting values that match the regexp are updated or unset. Ifyou want to handle the lines that do not match the regex, justprepend a single exclamation mark in front (see also EXAMPLES).

The —type=<type> option instructs git config to ensure that incoming andoutgoing values are canonicalize-able under the given <type>. If no—type=<type> is given, no canonicalization will be performed. Callers mayunset an existing —type specifier with —no-type.

When reading, the values are read from the system, global andrepository local configuration files by default, and options—system, —global, —local, —worktree and—file <filename> can be used to tell the command to read from onlythat location (see FILES).

When writing, the new value is written to the repository localconfiguration file by default, and options —system, —global,—worktree, —file <filename> can be used to tell the command towrite to that location (you can say —local but that is thedefault).

This command will fail with non-zero status upon error. Some exitcodes are:

  • The section or key is invalid (ret=1),

  • no section or name was provided (ret=2),

  • the config file is invalid (ret=3),

  • the config file cannot be written (ret=4),

  • you try to unset an option which does not exist (ret=5),

  • you try to unset/set an option for which multiple lines match (ret=5), or

  • you try to use an invalid regexp (ret=6).

On success, the command returns the exit code 0.

OPTIONS

  • —replace-all
  • Default behavior is to replace at most one line. This replacesall lines matching the key (and optionally the value_regex).

  • —add

  • Adds a new line to the option without altering any existingvalues. This is the same as providing ^$ as the value_regexin —replace-all.

  • —get

  • Get the value for a given key (optionally filtered by a regexmatching the value). Returns error code 1 if the key was notfound and the last value if multiple key values were found.

  • —get-all

  • Like get, but returns all values for a multi-valued key.

  • —get-regexp

  • Like —get-all, but interprets the name as a regular expression andwrites out the key names. Regular expression matching is currentlycase-sensitive and done against a canonicalized version of the keyin which section and variable names are lowercased, but subsectionnames are not.

  • —get-urlmatch name URL

  • When given a two-part name section.key, the value forsection..key whose part matches the best to thegiven URL is returned (if no such key exists, the value forsection.key is used as a fallback). When given just thesection as name, do so for all the keys in the section andlist them. Returns error code 1 if no value is found.

  • —global

  • For writing options: write to global ~/.gitconfig filerather than the repository .git/config, write to$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config file if this file exists and the~/.gitconfig file doesn’t.

For reading options: read only from global ~/.gitconfig and from$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config rather than from all available files.

See also FILES.

  • —system
  • For writing options: write to system-wide$(prefix)/etc/gitconfig rather than the repository.git/config.

For reading options: read only from system-wide $(prefix)/etc/gitconfigrather than from all available files.

See also FILES.

  • —local
  • For writing options: write to the repository .git/config file.This is the default behavior.

For reading options: read only from the repository .git/config rather thanfrom all available files.

See also FILES.

  • —worktree
  • Similar to —local except that .git/config.worktree isread from or written to if extensions.worktreeConfig ispresent. If not it’s the same as —local.

  • -f config-file

  • —file config-file
  • Use the given config file instead of the one specified by GIT_CONFIG.

  • —blob blob

  • Similar to —file but use the given blob instead of a file. E.g.you can use master:.gitmodules to read values from the file.gitmodules in the master branch. See "SPECIFYING REVISIONS"section in gitrevisions[7] for a more complete list ofways to spell blob names.

  • —remove-section

  • Remove the given section from the configuration file.

  • —rename-section

  • Rename the given section to a new name.

  • —unset

  • Remove the line matching the key from config file.

  • —unset-all

  • Remove all lines matching the key from config file.

  • -l

  • —list
  • List all variables set in config file, along with their values.

  • —type

  • git config will ensure that any input or output is valid under the giventype constraint(s), and will canonicalize outgoing values in <type>'scanonical form.

Valid <type>'s include:

  • bool: canonicalize values as either "true" or "false".

  • int: canonicalize values as simple decimal numbers. An optional suffix ofk, m, or g will cause the value to be multiplied by 1024, 1048576, or1073741824 upon input.

  • bool-or-int: canonicalize according to either bool or int, as describedabove.

  • path: canonicalize by adding a leading ~ to the value of $HOME and~user to the home directory for the specified user. This specifier has noeffect when setting the value (but you can use git config section.variable~/ from the command line to let your shell do the expansion.)

  • expiry-date: canonicalize by converting from a fixed or relative date-stringto a timestamp. This specifier has no effect when setting the value.

  • color: When getting a value, canonicalize by converting to an ANSI colorescape sequence. When setting a value, a sanity-check is performed to ensurethat the given value is canonicalize-able as an ANSI color, but it is writtenas-is.

  • —bool
  • —int
  • —bool-or-int
  • —path
  • —expiry-date
  • Historical options for selecting a type specifier. Prefer instead —type(see above).

  • —no-type

  • Un-sets the previously set type specifier (if one was previously set). Thisoption requests that git config not canonicalize the retrieved variable.—no-type has no effect without —type=<type> or —<type>.

  • -z

  • —null
  • For all options that output values and/or keys, alwaysend values with the null character (instead of anewline). Use newline instead as a delimiter betweenkey and value. This allows for secure parsing of theoutput without getting confused e.g. by values thatcontain line breaks.

  • —name-only

  • Output only the names of config variables for —list or—get-regexp.

  • —show-origin

  • Augment the output of all queried config options with theorigin type (file, standard input, blob, command line) andthe actual origin (config file path, ref, or blob id ifapplicable).

  • —get-colorbool name [stdout-is-tty]

  • Find the color setting for name (e.g. color.diff) and output"true" or "false". stdout-is-tty should be either "true" or"false", and is taken into account when configuration says"auto". If stdout-is-tty is missing, then checks the standardoutput of the command itself, and exits with status 0 if coloris to be used, or exits with status 1 otherwise.When the color setting for name is undefined, the command usescolor.ui as fallback.

  • —get-color name [default]

  • Find the color configured for name (e.g. color.diff.new) andoutput it as the ANSI color escape sequence to the standardoutput. The optional default parameter is used instead, ifthere is no color configured for name.

—type=color [—default=<default>] is preferred over —get-color(but note that —get-color will omit the trailing newline printed by—type=color).

  • -e
  • —edit
  • Opens an editor to modify the specified config file; either—system, —global, or repository (default).

  • —[no-]includes

  • Respect include.* directives in config files when looking upvalues. Defaults to off when a specific file is given (e.g.,using —file, —global, etc) and on when searching allconfig files.

  • —default

  • When using —get, and the requested variable is not found, behave as if were the value assigned to the that variable.

CONFIGURATION

pager.config is only respected when listing configuration, i.e., whenusing —list or any of the —get-* which may return multiple results.The default is to use a pager.

FILES

If not set explicitly with —file, there are four files wheregit config will search for configuration options:

  • $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig
  • System-wide configuration file.

  • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config

  • Second user-specific configuration file. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not setor empty, $HOME/.config/git/config will be used. Any single-valuedvariable set in this file will be overwritten by whatever is in~/.gitconfig. It is a good idea not to create this file ifyou sometimes use older versions of Git, as support for thisfile was added fairly recently.

  • ~/.gitconfig

  • User-specific configuration file. Also called "global"configuration file.

  • $GIT_DIR/config

  • Repository specific configuration file.

  • $GIT_DIR/config.worktree

  • This is optional and is only searched whenextensions.worktreeConfig is present in $GIT_DIR/config.

If no further options are given, all reading options will read all of thesefiles that are available. If the global or the system-wide configurationfile are not available they will be ignored. If the repository configurationfile is not available or readable, git config will exit with a non-zeroerror code. However, in neither case will an error message be issued.

The files are read in the order given above, with last value found takingprecedence over values read earlier. When multiple values are taken then allvalues of a key from all files will be used.

You may override individual configuration parameters when running any gitcommand by using the -c option. See git[1] for details.

All writing options will per default write to the repository specificconfiguration file. Note that this also affects options like —replace-alland —unset. git config will only ever change one file at a time.

You can override these rules either by command-line options or by environmentvariables. The —global, —system and —worktree options will limitthe file used to the global, system-wide or per-worktree file respectively.The GIT_CONFIG environment variable has a similar effect, but youcan specify any filename you want.

ENVIRONMENT

  • GIT_CONFIG
  • Take the configuration from the given file instead of .git/config.Using the "—global" option forces this to ~/.gitconfig. Using the"—system" option forces this to $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig.

  • GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM

  • Whether to skip reading settings from the system-wide$(prefix)/etc/gitconfig file. See git[1] for details.

See also FILES.

EXAMPLES

Given a .git/config like this:

  1. #
  2. # This is the config file, and
  3. # a '#' or ';' character indicates
  4. # a comment
  5. #
  1. ; core variables
  2. [core]
  3. ; Don't trust file modes
  4. filemode = false
  1. ; Our diff algorithm
  2. [diff]
  3. external = /usr/local/bin/diff-wrapper
  4. renames = true
  1. ; Proxy settings
  2. [core]
  3. gitproxy=proxy-command for kernel.org
  4. gitproxy=default-proxy ; for all the rest
  1. ; HTTP
  2. [http]
  3. sslVerify
  4. [http "https://weak.example.com"]
  5. sslVerify = false
  6. cookieFile = /tmp/cookie.txt

you can set the filemode to true with

  1. % git config core.filemode true

The hypothetical proxy command entries actually have a postfix to discernwhat URL they apply to. Here is how to change the entry for kernel.orgto "ssh".

  1. % git config core.gitproxy '"ssh" for kernel.org' 'for kernel.org$'

This makes sure that only the key/value pair for kernel.org is replaced.

To delete the entry for renames, do

  1. % git config --unset diff.renames

If you want to delete an entry for a multivar (like core.gitproxy above),you have to provide a regex matching the value of exactly one line.

To query the value for a given key, do

  1. % git config --get core.filemode

or

  1. % git config core.filemode

or, to query a multivar:

  1. % git config --get core.gitproxy "for kernel.org$"

If you want to know all the values for a multivar, do:

  1. % git config --get-all core.gitproxy

If you like to live dangerously, you can replace all core.gitproxy by anew one with

  1. % git config --replace-all core.gitproxy ssh

However, if you really only want to replace the line for the default proxy,i.e. the one without a "for …​" postfix, do something like this:

  1. % git config core.gitproxy ssh '! for '

To actually match only values with an exclamation mark, you have to

  1. % git config section.key value '[!]'

To add a new proxy, without altering any of the existing ones, use

  1. % git config --add core.gitproxy '"proxy-command" for example.com'

An example to use customized color from the configuration in yourscript:

  1. #!/bin/sh
  2. WS=$(git config --get-color color.diff.whitespace "blue reverse")
  3. RESET=$(git config --get-color "" "reset")
  4. echo "${WS}your whitespace color or blue reverse${RESET}"

For URLs in https://weak.example.com, http.sslVerify is set tofalse, while it is set to true for all others:

  1. % git config --type=bool --get-urlmatch http.sslverify https://good.example.com
  2. true
  3. % git config --type=bool --get-urlmatch http.sslverify https://weak.example.com
  4. false
  5. % git config --get-urlmatch http https://weak.example.com
  6. http.cookieFile /tmp/cookie.txt
  7. http.sslverify false

CONFIGURATION FILE

The Git configuration file contains a number of variables that affectthe Git commands' behavior. The files .git/config and optionallyconfig.worktree (see extensions.worktreeConfig below) in eachrepository are used to store the configuration for that repository, and$HOME/.gitconfig is used to store a per-user configuration asfallback values for the .git/config file. The file /etc/gitconfigcan be used to store a system-wide default configuration.

The configuration variables are used by both the Git plumbingand the porcelains. The variables are divided into sections, whereinthe fully qualified variable name of the variable itself is the lastdot-separated segment and the section name is everything before the lastdot. The variable names are case-insensitive, allow only alphanumericcharacters and -, and must start with an alphabetic character. Somevariables may appear multiple times; we say then that the variable ismultivalued.

Syntax

The syntax is fairly flexible and permissive; whitespaces are mostlyignored. The # and ; characters begin comments to the end of line,blank lines are ignored.

The file consists of sections and variables. A section begins withthe name of the section in square brackets and continues until the nextsection begins. Section names are case-insensitive. Only alphanumericcharacters, - and . are allowed in section names. Each variablemust belong to some section, which means that there must be a sectionheader before the first setting of a variable.

Sections can be further divided into subsections. To begin a subsectionput its name in double quotes, separated by space from the section name,in the section header, like in the example below:

  1. [section "subsection"]

Subsection names are case sensitive and can contain any characters exceptnewline and the null byte. Doublequote " and backslash can be includedby escaping them as \" and \, respectively. Backslashes precedingother characters are dropped when reading; for example, \t is read ast and \0 is read as 0 Section headers cannot span multiple lines.Variables may belong directly to a section or to a given subsection. Youcan have [section] if you have [section "subsection"], but you don’tneed to.

There is also a deprecated [section.subsection] syntax. With thissyntax, the subsection name is converted to lower-case and is alsocompared case sensitively. These subsection names follow the samerestrictions as section names.

All the other lines (and the remainder of the line after the sectionheader) are recognized as setting variables, in the formname = value (or just name, which is a short-hand to say thatthe variable is the boolean "true").The variable names are case-insensitive, allow only alphanumeric charactersand -, and must start with an alphabetic character.

A line that defines a value can be continued to the next line byending it with a \; the backquote and the end-of-line arestripped. Leading whitespaces after name =, the remainder of theline after the first comment character # or ;, and trailingwhitespaces of the line are discarded unless they are enclosed indouble quotes. Internal whitespaces within the value are retainedverbatim.

Inside double quotes, double quote " and backslash \ charactersmust be escaped: use \" for " and \ for \.

The following escape sequences (beside \" and \) are recognized:\n for newline character (NL), \t for horizontal tabulation (HT, TAB)and \b for backspace (BS). Other char escape sequences (including octalescape sequences) are invalid.

Includes

The include and includeIf sections allow you to include configdirectives from another source. These sections behave identically toeach other with the exception that includeIf sections may be ignoredif their condition does not evaluate to true; see "Conditional includes"below.

You can include a config file from another by setting the specialinclude.path (or includeIf.*.path) variable to the name of the fileto be included. The variable takes a pathname as its value, and issubject to tilde expansion. These variables can be given multiple times.

The contents of the included file are inserted immediately, as if theyhad been found at the location of the include directive. If the value of thevariable is a relative path, the path is considered tobe relative to the configuration file in which the include directivewas found. See below for examples.

Conditional includes

You can include a config file from another conditionally by setting aincludeIf.<condition>.path variable to the name of the file to beincluded.

The condition starts with a keyword followed by a colon and some datawhose format and meaning depends on the keyword. Supported keywordsare:

  • gitdir
  • The data that follows the keyword gitdir: is used as a globpattern. If the location of the .git directory matches thepattern, the include condition is met.

The .git location may be auto-discovered, or come from $GIT_DIRenvironment variable. If the repository is auto discovered via a .gitfile (e.g. from submodules, or a linked worktree), the .git locationwould be the final location where the .git directory is, not where the.git file is.

The pattern can contain standard globbing wildcards and two additionalones, / and /, that can match multiple path components. Pleaserefer to gitignore[5] for details. For convenience:

  • If the pattern starts with ~/, ~ will be substituted with thecontent of the environment variable HOME.

  • If the pattern starts with ./, it is replaced with the directorycontaining the current config file.

  • If the pattern does not start with either ~/, ./ or /, /will be automatically prepended. For example, the pattern foo/barbecomes /foo/bar and would match /any/path/to/foo/bar.

  • If the pattern ends with /, will be automatically added. Forexample, the pattern foo/ becomes foo/. In other words, itmatches "foo" and everything inside, recursively.

  • gitdir/i
  • This is the same as gitdir except that matching is donecase-insensitively (e.g. on case-insensitive file sytems)

  • onbranch

  • The data that follows the keyword onbranch: is taken to be apattern with standard globbing wildcards and two additionalones, / and /, that can match multiple path components.If we are in a worktree where the name of the branch that iscurrently checked out matches the pattern, the include conditionis met.

If the pattern ends with /, will be automatically added. Forexample, the pattern foo/ becomes foo/. In other words, it matchesall branches that begin with foo/. This is useful if your branches areorganized hierarchically and you would like to apply a configuration toall the branches in that hierarchy.

A few more notes on matching via gitdir and gitdir/i:

  • Symlinks in $GIT_DIR are not resolved before matching.

  • Both the symlink & realpath versions of paths will be matchedoutside of $GIT_DIR. E.g. if ~/git is a symlink to/mnt/storage/git, both gitdir:~/git and gitdir:/mnt/storage/gitwill match.

This was not the case in the initial release of this feature inv2.13.0, which only matched the realpath version. Configuration thatwants to be compatible with the initial release of this feature needsto either specify only the realpath version, or both versions.

  • Note that "../" is not special and will match literally, which isunlikely what you want.

Example

  1. # Core variables
  2. [core]
  3. ; Don't trust file modes
  4. filemode = false
  1. # Our diff algorithm
  2. [diff]
  3. external = /usr/local/bin/diff-wrapper
  4. renames = true
  1. [branch "devel"]
  2. remote = origin
  3. merge = refs/heads/devel
  1. # Proxy settings
  2. [core]
  3. gitProxy="ssh" for "kernel.org"
  4. gitProxy=default-proxy ; for the rest
  1. [include]
  2. path = /path/to/foo.inc ; include by absolute path
  3. path = foo.inc ; find "foo.inc" relative to the current file
  4. path = ~/foo.inc ; find "foo.inc" in your `$HOME` directory
  1. ; include if $GIT_DIR is /path/to/foo/.git
  2. [includeIf "gitdir:/path/to/foo/.git"]
  3. path = /path/to/foo.inc
  1. ; include for all repositories inside /path/to/group
  2. [includeIf "gitdir:/path/to/group/"]
  3. path = /path/to/foo.inc
  1. ; include for all repositories inside $HOME/to/group
  2. [includeIf "gitdir:~/to/group/"]
  3. path = /path/to/foo.inc
  1. ; relative paths are always relative to the including
  2. ; file (if the condition is true); their location is not
  3. ; affected by the condition
  4. [includeIf "gitdir:/path/to/group/"]
  5. path = foo.inc
  1. ; include only if we are in a worktree where foo-branch is
  2. ; currently checked out
  3. [includeIf "onbranch:foo-branch"]
  4. path = foo.inc

Values

Values of many variables are treated as a simple string, but thereare variables that take values of specific types and there are rulesas to how to spell them.

  • boolean
  • When a variable is said to take a boolean value, manysynonyms are accepted for true and false; these are allcase-insensitive.
  • true
  • Boolean true literals are yes, on, true,and 1. Also, a variable defined without = <value>is taken as true.

  • false

  • Boolean false literals are no, off, false,0 and the empty string.

When converting a value to its canonical form using the —type=bool typespecifier, git config will ensure that the output is "true" or"false" (spelled in lowercase).

  • integer
  • The value for many variables that specify various sizes canbe suffixed with k, M,…​ to mean "scale the number by1024", "by 1024x1024", etc.

  • color

  • The value for a variable that takes a color is a list ofcolors (at most two, one for foreground and one for background)and attributes (as many as you want), separated by spaces.

The basic colors accepted are normal, black, red, green, yellow,blue, magenta, cyan and white. The first color given is theforeground; the second is the background.

Colors may also be given as numbers between 0 and 255; these use ANSI256-color mode (but note that not all terminals may support this). Ifyour terminal supports it, you may also specify 24-bit RGB values ashex, like #ff0ab3.

The accepted attributes are bold, dim, ul, blink, reverse,italic, and strike (for crossed-out or "strikethrough" letters).The position of any attributes with respect to the colors(before, after, or in between), doesn’t matter. Specific attributes maybe turned off by prefixing them with no or no- (e.g., noreverse,no-ul, etc).

An empty color string produces no color effect at all. This can be usedto avoid coloring specific elements without disabling color entirely.

For git’s pre-defined color slots, the attributes are meant to be resetat the beginning of each item in the colored output. So settingcolor.decorate.branch to black will paint that branch name in aplain black, even if the previous thing on the same output line (e.g.opening parenthesis before the list of branch names in log —decorateoutput) is set to be painted with bold or some other attribute.However, custom log formats may do more complicated and layeredcoloring, and the negated forms may be useful there.

  • pathname
  • A variable that takes a pathname value can be given astring that begins with "~/" or "~user/", and the usualtilde expansion happens to such a string: ~/is expanded to the value of $HOME, and ~user/ to thespecified user’s home directory.

Variables

Note that this list is non-comprehensive and not necessarily complete.For command-specific variables, you will find a more detailed descriptionin the appropriate manual page.

Other git-related tools may and do use their own variables. Wheninventing new variables for use in your own tool, make sure theirnames do not conflict with those that are used by Git itself andother popular tools, and describe them in your documentation.

  • advice.*
  • These variables control various optional help messages designed toaid new users. All advice.* variables default to true, and youcan tell Git that you do not need help by setting these to false:
  • fetchShowForcedUpdates
  • Advice shown when git-fetch[1] takes a long timeto calculate forced updates after ref updates, or to warnthat the check is disabled.

  • pushUpdateRejected

  • Set this variable to false if you want to disablepushNonFFCurrent,pushNonFFMatching, pushAlreadyExists,pushFetchFirst, and _pushNeedsForce_simultaneously.

  • pushNonFFCurrent

  • Advice shown when git-push[1] fails due to anon-fast-forward update to the current branch.

  • pushNonFFMatching

  • Advice shown when you ran git-push[1] and pushedmatching refs explicitly (i.e. you used :, orspecified a refspec that isn’t your current branch) andit resulted in a non-fast-forward error.

  • pushAlreadyExists

  • Shown when git-push[1] rejects an update thatdoes not qualify for fast-forwarding (e.g., a tag.)

  • pushFetchFirst

  • Shown when git-push[1] rejects an update thattries to overwrite a remote ref that points at anobject we do not have.

  • pushNeedsForce

  • Shown when git-push[1] rejects an update thattries to overwrite a remote ref that points at anobject that is not a commit-ish, or make the remoteref point at an object that is not a commit-ish.

  • pushUnqualifiedRefname

  • Shown when git-push[1] gives up trying toguess based on the source and destination refs whatremote ref namespace the source belongs in, but wherewe can still suggest that the user push to eitherrefs/heads/ or refs/tags/ based on the type of thesource object.

  • statusAheadBehind

  • Shown when git-status[1] computes the ahead/behindcounts for a local ref compared to its remote tracking ref,and that calculation takes longer than expected. Will notappear if status.aheadBehind is false or the option—no-ahead-behind is given.

  • statusHints

  • Show directions on how to proceed from the currentstate in the output of git-status[1], inthe template shown when writing commit messages ingit-commit[1], and in the help message shownby git-switch[1] orgit-checkout[1] when switching branch.

  • statusUoption

  • Advise to consider using the -u option to git-status[1]when the command takes more than 2 seconds to enumerate untrackedfiles.

  • commitBeforeMerge

  • Advice shown when git-merge[1] refuses tomerge to avoid overwriting local changes.

  • resetQuiet

  • Advice to consider using the —quiet option to git-reset[1]when the command takes more than 2 seconds to enumerate unstagedchanges after reset.

  • resolveConflict

  • Advice shown by various commands when conflictsprevent the operation from being performed.

  • sequencerInUse

  • Advice shown when a sequencer command is already in progress.

  • implicitIdentity

  • Advice on how to set your identity configuration whenyour information is guessed from the system username anddomain name.

  • detachedHead

  • Advice shown when you usedgit-switch[1] or git-checkout[1]to move to the detach HEAD state, to instruct how tocreate a local branch after the fact.

  • checkoutAmbiguousRemoteBranchName

  • Advice shown when the argument togit-checkout[1] and git-switch[1]ambiguously resolves to aremote tracking branch on more than one remote insituations where an unambiguous argument would haveotherwise caused a remote-tracking branch to bechecked out. See the checkout.defaultRemoteconfiguration variable for how to set a given remoteto used by default in some situations where thisadvice would be printed.

  • amWorkDir

  • Advice that shows the location of the patch file whengit-am[1] fails to apply it.

  • rmHints

  • In case of failure in the output of git-rm[1],show directions on how to proceed from the current state.

  • addEmbeddedRepo

  • Advice on what to do when you’ve accidentally added onegit repo inside of another.

  • ignoredHook

  • Advice shown if a hook is ignored because the hook is notset as executable.

  • waitingForEditor

  • Print a message to the terminal whenever Git is waiting foreditor input from the user.

  • nestedTag

  • Advice shown if a user attempts to recursively tag a tag object.
  • core.fileMode
  • Tells Git if the executable bit of files in the working treeis to be honored.

Some filesystems lose the executable bit when a file that ismarked as executable is checked out, or checks out anon-executable file with executable bit on.git-clone[1] or git-init[1] probe the filesystemto see if it handles the executable bit correctlyand this variable is automatically set as necessary.

A repository, however, may be on a filesystem that handlesthe filemode correctly, and this variable is set to true_when created, but later may be made accessible from anotherenvironment that loses the filemode (e.g. exporting ext4 viaCIFS mount, visiting a Cygwin created repository withGit for Windows or Eclipse).In such a case it may be necessary to set this variable to _false.See git-update-index[1].

The default is true (when core.filemode is not specified in the config file).

  • core.hideDotFiles
  • (Windows-only) If true, mark newly-created directories and files whosename starts with a dot as hidden. If dotGitOnly, only the .git/directory is hidden, but no other files starting with a dot. Thedefault mode is dotGitOnly.

  • core.ignoreCase

  • Internal variable which enables various workarounds to enableGit to work better on filesystems that are not case sensitive,like APFS, HFS+, FAT, NTFS, etc. For example, if a directory listingfinds "makefile" when Git expects "Makefile", Git will assumeit is really the same file, and continue to remember it as"Makefile".

The default is false, except git-clone[1] or git-init[1]will probe and set core.ignoreCase true if appropriate when the repositoryis created.

Git relies on the proper configuration of this variable for your operatingand file system. Modifying this value may result in unexpected behavior.

  • core.precomposeUnicode
  • This option is only used by Mac OS implementation of Git.When core.precomposeUnicode=true, Git reverts the unicode decompositionof filenames done by Mac OS. This is useful when sharing a repositorybetween Mac OS and Linux or Windows.(Git for Windows 1.7.10 or higher is needed, or Git under cygwin 1.7).When false, file names are handled fully transparent by Git,which is backward compatible with older versions of Git.

  • core.protectHFS

  • If set to true, do not allow checkout of paths that wouldbe considered equivalent to .git on an HFS+ filesystem.Defaults to true on Mac OS, and false elsewhere.

  • core.protectNTFS

  • If set to true, do not allow checkout of paths that wouldcause problems with the NTFS filesystem, e.g. conflict with8.3 "short" names.Defaults to true on Windows, and false elsewhere.

  • core.fsmonitor

  • If set, the value of this variable is used as a command whichwill identify all files that may have changed since therequested date/time. This information is used to speed up git byavoiding unnecessary processing of files that have not changed.See the "fsmonitor-watchman" section of githooks[5].

  • core.trustctime

  • If false, the ctime differences between the index and theworking tree are ignored; useful when the inode change timeis regularly modified by something outside Git (file systemcrawlers and some backup systems).See git-update-index[1]. True by default.

  • core.splitIndex

  • If true, the split-index feature of the index will be used.See git-update-index[1]. False by default.

  • core.untrackedCache

  • Determines what to do about the untracked cache feature of theindex. It will be kept, if this variable is unset or set tokeep. It will automatically be added if set to true. Andit will automatically be removed, if set to false. Beforesetting it to true, you should check that mtime is workingproperly on your system.See git-update-index[1]. keep by default.

  • core.checkStat

  • When missing or is set to default, many fields in the statstructure are checked to detect if a file has been modifiedsince Git looked at it. When this configuration variable isset to minimal, sub-second part of mtime and ctime, theuid and gid of the owner of the file, the inode number (andthe device number, if Git was compiled to use it), areexcluded from the check among these fields, leaving only thewhole-second part of mtime (and ctime, if core.trustCtimeis set) and the filesize to be checked.

There are implementations of Git that do not leave usable values insome fields (e.g. JGit); by excluding these fields from thecomparison, the minimal mode may help interoperability when thesame repository is used by these other systems at the same time.

  • core.quotePath
  • Commands that output paths (e.g. ls-files, diff), willquote "unusual" characters in the pathname by enclosing thepathname in double-quotes and escaping those characters withbackslashes in the same way C escapes control characters (e.g.\t for TAB, \n for LF, \ for backslash) or bytes withvalues larger than 0x80 (e.g. octal \302\265 for "micro" inUTF-8). If this variable is set to false, bytes higher than0x80 are not considered "unusual" any more. Double-quotes,backslash and control characters are always escaped regardlessof the setting of this variable. A simple space character isnot considered "unusual". Many commands can output pathnamescompletely verbatim using the -z option. The default valueis true.

  • core.eol

  • Sets the line ending type to use in the working directory forfiles that are marked as text (either by having the textattribute set, or by having text=auto and Git auto-detectingthe contents as text).Alternatives are lf, crlf and native, which uses the platform’snative line ending. The default value is native. Seegitattributes[5] for more information on end-of-lineconversion. Note that this value is ignored if core.autocrlfis set to true or input.

  • core.safecrlf

  • If true, makes Git check if converting CRLF is reversible whenend-of-line conversion is active. Git will verify if a commandmodifies a file in the work tree either directly or indirectly.For example, committing a file followed by checking out thesame file should yield the original file in the work tree. Ifthis is not the case for the current setting ofcore.autocrlf, Git will reject the file. The variable canbe set to "warn", in which case Git will only warn about anirreversible conversion but continue the operation.

CRLF conversion bears a slight chance of corrupting data.When it is enabled, Git will convert CRLF to LF during commit and LF toCRLF during checkout. A file that contains a mixture of LF andCRLF before the commit cannot be recreated by Git. For textfiles this is the right thing to do: it corrects line endingssuch that we have only LF line endings in the repository.But for binary files that are accidentally classified as text theconversion can corrupt data.

If you recognize such corruption early you can easily fix it bysetting the conversion type explicitly in .gitattributes. Rightafter committing you still have the original file in your worktree and this file is not yet corrupted. You can explicitly tellGit that this file is binary and Git will handle the fileappropriately.

Unfortunately, the desired effect of cleaning up text files withmixed line endings and the undesired effect of corrupting binaryfiles cannot be distinguished. In both cases CRLFs are removedin an irreversible way. For text files this is the right thingto do because CRLFs are line endings, while for binary filesconverting CRLFs corrupts data.

Note, this safety check does not mean that a checkout will generate afile identical to the original file for a different setting ofcore.eol and core.autocrlf, but only for the current one. Forexample, a text file with LF would be accepted with core.eol=lfand could later be checked out with core.eol=crlf, in which case theresulting file would contain CRLF, although the original filecontained LF. However, in both work trees the line endings would beconsistent, that is either all LF or all CRLF, but never mixed. Afile with mixed line endings would be reported by the core.safecrlfmechanism.

  • core.autocrlf
  • Setting this variable to "true" is the same as settingthe text attribute to "auto" on all files and core.eol to "crlf".Set to true if you want to have CRLF line endings in yourworking directory and the repository has LF line endings.This variable can be set to input,in which case no output conversion is performed.

  • core.checkRoundtripEncoding

  • A comma and/or whitespace separated list of encodings that Gitperforms UTF-8 round trip checks on if they are used in anworking-tree-encoding attribute (see gitattributes[5]).The default value is SHIFT-JIS.

  • core.symlinks

  • If false, symbolic links are checked out as small plain files thatcontain the link text. git-update-index[1] andgit-add[1] will not change the recorded type to regularfile. Useful on filesystems like FAT that do not supportsymbolic links.

The default is true, except git-clone[1] or git-init[1]will probe and set core.symlinks false if appropriate when the repositoryis created.

  • core.gitProxy
  • A "proxy command" to execute (as command host port) insteadof establishing direct connection to the remote server whenusing the Git protocol for fetching. If the variable value isin the "COMMAND for DOMAIN" format, the command is applied onlyon hostnames ending with the specified domain string. This variablemay be set multiple times and is matched in the given order;the first match wins.

Can be overridden by the GIT_PROXY_COMMAND environment variable(which always applies universally, without the special "for"handling).

The special string none can be used as the proxy command tospecify that no proxy be used for a given domain pattern.This is useful for excluding servers inside a firewall fromproxy use, while defaulting to a common proxy for external domains.

  • core.sshCommand
  • If this variable is set, git fetch and git push willuse the specified command instead of ssh when they need toconnect to a remote system. The command is in the same form asthe GIT_SSH_COMMAND environment variable and is overriddenwhen the environment variable is set.

  • core.ignoreStat

  • If true, Git will avoid using lstat() calls to detect if files havechanged by setting the "assume-unchanged" bit for those tracked fileswhich it has updated identically in both the index and working tree.

When files are modified outside of Git, the user will need to stagethe modified files explicitly (e.g. see Examples section ingit-update-index[1]).Git will not normally detect changes to those files.

This is useful on systems where lstat() calls are very slow, such asCIFS/Microsoft Windows.

False by default.

  • core.preferSymlinkRefs
  • Instead of the default "symref" format for HEADand other symbolic reference files, use symbolic links.This is sometimes needed to work with old scripts thatexpect HEAD to be a symbolic link.

  • core.alternateRefsCommand

  • When advertising tips of available history from an alternate, use the shell toexecute the specified command instead of git-for-each-ref[1]. Thefirst argument is the absolute path of the alternate. Output must contain onehex object id per line (i.e., the same as produced by git for-each-ref—format='%(objectname)').

Note that you cannot generally put git for-each-ref directly into the configvalue, as it does not take a repository path as an argument (but you can wrapthe command above in a shell script).

  • core.alternateRefsPrefixes
  • When listing references from an alternate, list only references that beginwith the given prefix. Prefixes match as if they were given as arguments togit-for-each-ref[1]. To list multiple prefixes, separate them withwhitespace. If core.alternateRefsCommand is set, settingcore.alternateRefsPrefixes has no effect.

  • core.bare

  • If true this repository is assumed to be bare and has noworking directory associated with it. If this is the case anumber of commands that require a working directory will bedisabled, such as git-add[1] or git-merge[1].

This setting is automatically guessed by git-clone[1] orgit-init[1] when the repository was created. By default arepository that ends in "/.git" is assumed to be not bare (bare =false), while all other repositories are assumed to be bare (bare= true).

  • core.worktree
  • Set the path to the root of the working tree.If GIT_COMMON_DIR environment variable is set, core.worktreeis ignored and not used for determining the root of working tree.This can be overridden by the GIT_WORK_TREE environmentvariable and the —work-tree command-line option.The value can be an absolute path or relative to the path tothe .git directory, which is either specified by —git-diror GIT_DIR, or automatically discovered.If —git-dir or GIT_DIR is specified but none of—work-tree, GIT_WORK_TREE and core.worktree is specified,the current working directory is regarded as the top levelof your working tree.

Note that this variable is honored even when set in a configurationfile in a ".git" subdirectory of a directory and its value differsfrom the latter directory (e.g. "/path/to/.git/config" hascore.worktree set to "/different/path"), which is most likely amisconfiguration. Running Git commands in the "/path/to" directory willstill use "/different/path" as the root of the work tree and can causeconfusion unless you know what you are doing (e.g. you are creating aread-only snapshot of the same index to a location different from therepository’s usual working tree).

  • core.logAllRefUpdates
  • Enable the reflog. Updates to a ref is logged to the file"$GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>", by appending the new and oldSHA-1, the date/time and the reason of the update, butonly when the file exists. If this configurationvariable is set to true, missing "$GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>"file is automatically created for branch heads (i.e. underrefs/heads/), remote refs (i.e. under refs/remotes/),note refs (i.e. under refs/notes/), and the symbolic ref HEAD.If it is set to always, then a missing reflog is automaticallycreated for any ref under refs/.

This information can be used to determine what commitwas the tip of a branch "2 days ago".

This value is true by default in a repository that hasa working directory associated with it, and false bydefault in a bare repository.

  • core.repositoryFormatVersion
  • Internal variable identifying the repository format and layoutversion.

  • core.sharedRepository

  • When group (or true), the repository is made shareable betweenseveral users in a group (making sure all the files and objects aregroup-writable). When all (or world or everybody), therepository will be readable by all users, additionally to beinggroup-shareable. When umask (or false), Git will use permissionsreported by umask(2). When 0xxx, where 0xxx is an octal number,files in the repository will have this mode value. 0xxx will overrideuser’s umask value (whereas the other options will only overriderequested parts of the user’s umask value). Examples: 0660 will makethe repo read/write-able for the owner and group, but inaccessible toothers (equivalent to group unless umask is e.g. 0022). 0640 is arepository that is group-readable but not group-writable.See git-init[1]. False by default.

  • core.warnAmbiguousRefs

  • If true, Git will warn you if the ref name you passed it is ambiguousand might match multiple refs in the repository. True by default.

  • core.compression

  • An integer -1..9, indicating a default compression level.-1 is the zlib default. 0 means no compression,and 1..9 are various speed/size tradeoffs, 9 being slowest.If set, this provides a default to other compression variables,such as core.looseCompression and pack.compression.

  • core.looseCompression

  • An integer -1..9, indicating the compression level for objects thatare not in a pack file. -1 is the zlib default. 0 means nocompression, and 1..9 are various speed/size tradeoffs, 9 beingslowest. If not set, defaults to core.compression. If that isnot set, defaults to 1 (best speed).

  • core.packedGitWindowSize

  • Number of bytes of a pack file to map into memory in asingle mapping operation. Larger window sizes may allowyour system to process a smaller number of large pack filesmore quickly. Smaller window sizes will negatively affectperformance due to increased calls to the operating system’smemory manager, but may improve performance when accessinga large number of large pack files.

Default is 1 MiB if NO_MMAP was set at compile time, otherwise 32MiB on 32 bit platforms and 1 GiB on 64 bit platforms. This shouldbe reasonable for all users/operating systems. You probably donot need to adjust this value.

Common unit suffixes of k, m, or g are supported.

  • core.packedGitLimit
  • Maximum number of bytes to map simultaneously into memoryfrom pack files. If Git needs to access more than this manybytes at once to complete an operation it will unmap existingregions to reclaim virtual address space within the process.

Default is 256 MiB on 32 bit platforms and 32 TiB (effectivelyunlimited) on 64 bit platforms.This should be reasonable for all users/operating systems, except onthe largest projects. You probably do not need to adjust this value.

Common unit suffixes of k, m, or g are supported.

  • core.deltaBaseCacheLimit
  • Maximum number of bytes to reserve for caching base objectsthat may be referenced by multiple deltified objects. By storing theentire decompressed base objects in a cache Git is ableto avoid unpacking and decompressing frequently used baseobjects multiple times.

Default is 96 MiB on all platforms. This should be reasonablefor all users/operating systems, except on the largest projects.You probably do not need to adjust this value.

Common unit suffixes of k, m, or g are supported.

  • core.bigFileThreshold
  • Files larger than this size are stored deflated, withoutattempting delta compression. Storing large files withoutdelta compression avoids excessive memory usage, at theslight expense of increased disk usage. Additionally fileslarger than this size are always treated as binary.

Default is 512 MiB on all platforms. This should be reasonablefor most projects as source code and other text files can stillbe delta compressed, but larger binary media files won’t be.

Common unit suffixes of k, m, or g are supported.

  • core.excludesFile
  • Specifies the pathname to the file that contains patterns todescribe paths that are not meant to be tracked, in additionto .gitignore (per-directory) and .git/info/exclude.Defaults to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore.If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or empty, $HOME/.config/git/ignoreis used instead. See gitignore[5].

  • core.askPass

  • Some commands (e.g. svn and http interfaces) that interactivelyask for a password can be told to use an external program givenvia the value of this variable. Can be overridden by the GIT_ASKPASSenvironment variable. If not set, fall back to the value of theSSH_ASKPASS environment variable or, failing that, a simple passwordprompt. The external program shall be given a suitable prompt ascommand-line argument and write the password on its STDOUT.

  • core.attributesFile

  • In addition to .gitattributes (per-directory) and.git/info/attributes, Git looks into this file for attributes(see gitattributes[5]). Path expansions are made the sameway as for core.excludesFile. Its default value is$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/attributes. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either notset or empty, $HOME/.config/git/attributes is used instead.

  • core.hooksPath

  • By default Git will look for your hooks in the$GIT_DIR/hooks directory. Set this to different path,e.g. /etc/git/hooks, and Git will try to find your hooks inthat directory, e.g. /etc/git/hooks/pre-receive instead ofin $GIT_DIR/hooks/pre-receive.

The path can be either absolute or relative. A relative path istaken as relative to the directory where the hooks are run (seethe "DESCRIPTION" section of githooks[5]).

This configuration variable is useful in cases where you’d like tocentrally configure your Git hooks instead of configuring them on aper-repository basis, or as a more flexible and centralizedalternative to having an init.templateDir where you’ve changeddefault hooks.

  • core.editor
  • Commands such as commit and tag that let you editmessages by launching an editor use the value of thisvariable when it is set, and the environment variableGIT_EDITOR is not set. See git-var[1].

  • core.commentChar

  • Commands such as commit and tag that let you editmessages consider a line that begins with this charactercommented, and removes them after the editor returns(default #).

If set to "auto", git-commit would select a character that is notthe beginning character of any line in existing commit messages.

  • core.filesRefLockTimeout
  • The length of time, in milliseconds, to retry when trying tolock an individual reference. Value 0 means not to retry atall; -1 means to try indefinitely. Default is 100 (i.e.,retry for 100ms).

  • core.packedRefsTimeout

  • The length of time, in milliseconds, to retry when trying tolock the packed-refs file. Value 0 means not to retry atall; -1 means to try indefinitely. Default is 1000 (i.e.,retry for 1 second).

  • core.pager

  • Text viewer for use by Git commands (e.g., less). The valueis meant to be interpreted by the shell. The order of preferenceis the $GITPAGER environment variable, then core.pagerconfiguration, then $PAGER, and then the default chosen atcompile time (usually _less).

When the LESS environment variable is unset, Git sets it to FRX(if LESS environment variable is set, Git does not change it atall). If you want to selectively override Git’s default settingfor LESS, you can set core.pager to e.g. less -S. This willbe passed to the shell by Git, which will translate the finalcommand to LESS=FRX less -S. The environment does not set theS option but the command line does, instructing less to truncatelong lines. Similarly, setting core.pager to less -+F willdeactivate the F option specified by the environment from thecommand-line, deactivating the "quit if one screen" behavior ofless. One can specifically activate some flags for particularcommands: for example, setting pager.blame to less -S enablesline truncation only for git blame.

Likewise, when the LV environment variable is unset, Git sets itto -c. You can override this setting by exporting LV withanother value or setting core.pager to lv +c.

  • core.whitespace
  • A comma separated list of common whitespace problems tonotice. git diff will use color.diff.whitespace tohighlight them, and git apply —whitespace=error willconsider them as errors. You can prefix - to disableany of them (e.g. -trailing-space):
  • blank-at-eol treats trailing whitespaces at the end of the lineas an error (enabled by default).

  • space-before-tab treats a space character that appears immediatelybefore a tab character in the initial indent part of the line as anerror (enabled by default).

  • indent-with-non-tab treats a line that is indented with spacecharacters instead of the equivalent tabs as an error (not enabled bydefault).

  • tab-in-indent treats a tab character in the initial indent part ofthe line as an error (not enabled by default).

  • blank-at-eof treats blank lines added at the end of file as an error(enabled by default).

  • trailing-space is a short-hand to cover both blank-at-eol andblank-at-eof.

  • cr-at-eol treats a carriage-return at the end of line aspart of the line terminator, i.e. with it, trailing-spacedoes not trigger if the character before such a carriage-returnis not a whitespace (not enabled by default).

  • tabwidth=<n> tells how many character positions a tab occupies; thisis relevant for indent-with-non-tab and when Git fixes tab-in-indenterrors. The default tab width is 8. Allowed values are 1 to 63.

  • core.fsyncObjectFiles
  • This boolean will enable fsync() when writing object files.

This is a total waste of time and effort on a filesystem that ordersdata writes properly, but can be useful for filesystems that do not usejournalling (traditional UNIX filesystems) or that only journal metadataand not file contents (OS X’s HFS+, or Linux ext3 with "data=writeback").

  • core.preloadIndex
  • Enable parallel index preload for operations like git diff

This can speed up operations like git diff and git status especiallyon filesystems like NFS that have weak caching semantics and thusrelatively high IO latencies. When enabled, Git will do theindex comparison to the filesystem data in parallel, allowingoverlapping IO’s. Defaults to true.

  • core.unsetenvvars
  • Windows-only: comma-separated list of environment variables'names that need to be unset before spawning any other process.Defaults to PERL5LIB to account for the fact that Git forWindows insists on using its own Perl interpreter.

  • core.createObject

  • You can set this to link, in which case a hardlink followed bya delete of the source are used to make sure that object creationwill not overwrite existing objects.

On some file system/operating system combinations, this is unreliable.Set this config setting to rename there; However, This will remove thecheck that makes sure that existing object files will not get overwritten.

  • core.notesRef
  • When showing commit messages, also show notes which are stored inthe given ref. The ref must be fully qualified. If the givenref does not exist, it is not an error but means that nonotes should be printed.

This setting defaults to "refs/notes/commits", and it can be overridden bythe GIT_NOTES_REF environment variable. See git-notes[1].

  • core.commitGraph
  • If true, then git will read the commit-graph file (if it exists)to parse the graph structure of commits. Defaults to false. Seegit-commit-graph[1] for more information.

  • core.useReplaceRefs

  • If set to false, behave as if the —no-replace-objectsoption was given on the command line. See git[1] andgit-replace[1] for more information.

  • core.multiPackIndex

  • Use the multi-pack-index file to track multiple packfiles using asingle index. See themulti-pack-index design document.

  • core.sparseCheckout

  • Enable "sparse checkout" feature. See section "Sparse checkout" ingit-read-tree[1] for more information.

  • core.abbrev

  • Set the length object names are abbreviated to. Ifunspecified or set to "auto", an appropriate value iscomputed based on the approximate number of packed objectsin your repository, which hopefully is enough forabbreviated object names to stay unique for some time.The minimum length is 4.

  • add.ignoreErrors

  • add.ignore-errors (deprecated)
  • Tells git add to continue adding files when some files cannot beadded due to indexing errors. Equivalent to the —ignore-errorsoption of git-add[1]. add.ignore-errors is deprecated,as it does not follow the usual naming convention for configurationvariables.

  • alias.*

  • Command aliases for the git[1] command wrapper - e.g.after defining alias.last = cat-file commit HEAD, the invocationgit last is equivalent to git cat-file commit HEAD. To avoidconfusion and troubles with script usage, aliases thathide existing Git commands are ignored. Arguments are split byspaces, the usual shell quoting and escaping is supported.A quote pair or a backslash can be used to quote them.

Note that the first word of an alias does not necessarily have to be acommand. It can be a command-line option that will be passed into theinvocation of git. In particular, this is useful when used with -cto pass in one-time configurations or -p to force pagination. For example,loud-rebase = -c commit.verbose=true rebase can be defined such thatrunning git loud-rebase would be equivalent togit -c commit.verbose=true rebase. Also, ps = -p status would be ahelpful alias since git ps would paginate the output of git statuswhere the original command does not.

If the alias expansion is prefixed with an exclamation point,it will be treated as a shell command. For example, definingalias.new = !gitk —all —not ORIG_HEAD, the invocationgit new is equivalent to running the shell commandgitk —all —not ORIG_HEAD. Note that shell commands will beexecuted from the top-level directory of a repository, which maynot necessarily be the current directory.GIT_PREFIX is set as returned by running git rev-parse —show-prefixfrom the original current directory. See git-rev-parse[1].

  • am.keepcr
  • If true, git-am will call git-mailsplit for patches in mbox formatwith parameter —keep-cr. In this case git-mailsplit willnot remove \r from lines ending with \r\n. Can be overriddenby giving —no-keep-cr from the command line.See git-am[1], git-mailsplit[1].

  • am.threeWay

  • By default, git am will fail if the patch does not apply cleanly. Whenset to true, this setting tells git am to fall back on 3-way merge ifthe patch records the identity of blobs it is supposed to apply to andwe have those blobs available locally (equivalent to giving the —3wayoption from the command line). Defaults to false.See git-am[1].

  • apply.ignoreWhitespace

  • When set to change, tells git apply to ignore changes inwhitespace, in the same way as the —ignore-space-changeoption.When set to one of: no, none, never, false tells git apply torespect all whitespace differences.See git-apply[1].

  • apply.whitespace

  • Tells git apply how to handle whitespaces, in the same wayas the —whitespace option. See git-apply[1].

  • blame.blankBoundary

  • Show blank commit object name for boundary commits ingit-blame[1]. This option defaults to false.

  • blame.coloring

  • This determines the coloring scheme to be applied to blameoutput. It can be repeatedLines, highlightRecent,or none which is the default.

  • blame.date

  • Specifies the format used to output dates in git-blame[1].If unset the iso format is used. For supported values,see the discussion of the —date option at git-log[1].

  • blame.showEmail

  • Show the author email instead of author name in git-blame[1].This option defaults to false.

  • blame.showRoot

  • Do not treat root commits as boundaries in git-blame[1].This option defaults to false.

  • blame.ignoreRevsFile

  • Ignore revisions listed in the file, one unabbreviated object name perline, in git-blame[1]. Whitespace and comments beginning with# are ignored. This option may be repeated multiple times. Emptyfile names will reset the list of ignored revisions. This option willbe handled before the command line option —ignore-revs-file.

  • blame.markUnblamables

  • Mark lines that were changed by an ignored revision that we could notattribute to another commit with a * in the output ofgit-blame[1].

  • blame.markIgnoredLines

  • Mark lines that were changed by an ignored revision that we attributed toanother commit with a ? in the output of git-blame[1].

  • branch.autoSetupMerge

  • Tells git branch, git switch and git checkout to set up new branchesso that git-pull[1] will appropriately merge from thestarting point branch. Note that even if this option is not set,this behavior can be chosen per-branch using the —trackand —no-track options. The valid settings are: false — noautomatic setup is done; true — automatic setup is done when thestarting point is a remote-tracking branch; always — automatic setup is done when the starting point is either alocal branch or remote-trackingbranch. This option defaults to true.

  • branch.autoSetupRebase

  • When a new branch is created with git branch, git switch or _git checkout_that tracks another branch, this variable tells Git to setup pull to rebase instead of merge (see "branch..rebase").When never, rebase is never automatically set to true.When local, rebase is set to true for tracked branches ofother local branches.When remote, rebase is set to true for tracked branches ofremote-tracking branches.When always, rebase will be set to true for all trackingbranches.See "branch.autoSetupMerge" for details on how to set up abranch to track another branch.This option defaults to never.

  • branch.sort

  • This variable controls the sort ordering of branches when displayed bygit-branch[1]. Without the "—sort=" option provided, thevalue of this variable will be used as the default.See git-for-each-ref[1] field names for valid values.

  • branch..remote

  • When on branch , it tells git fetch and _git push_which remote to fetch from/push to. The remote to push tomay be overridden with remote.pushDefault (for all branches).The remote to push to, for the current branch, may be furtheroverridden by branch.<name>.pushRemote. If no remote isconfigured, or if you are not on any branch, it defaults toorigin for fetching and remote.pushDefault for pushing.Additionally, . (a period) is the current local repository(a dot-repository), see branch.<name>.merge's final note below.

  • branch..pushRemote

  • When on branch , it overrides branch.<name>.remote forpushing. It also overrides remote.pushDefault for pushingfrom branch . When you pull from one place (e.g. yourupstream) and push to another place (e.g. your own publishingrepository), you would want to set remote.pushDefault tospecify the remote to push to for all branches, and use thisoption to override it for a specific branch.

  • branch..merge

  • Defines, together with branch..remote, the upstream branchfor the given branch. It tells git fetch/git pull/git rebase whichbranch to merge and can also affect git push (see push.default).When in branch , it tells git fetch the defaultrefspec to be marked for merging in FETCHHEAD. The value ishandled like the remote part of a refspec, and must match aref which is fetched from the remote given by"branch..remote".The merge information is used by _git pull (which at first callsgit fetch) to lookup the default branch for merging. Withoutthis option, git pull defaults to merge the first refspec fetched.Specify multiple values to get an octopus merge.If you wish to setup git pull so that it merges into fromanother branch in the local repository, you can pointbranch..merge to the desired branch, and use the relative pathsetting . (a period) for branch..remote.

  • branch..mergeOptions

  • Sets default options for merging into branch . The syntax andsupported options are the same as those of git-merge[1], butoption values containing whitespace characters are currently notsupported.

  • branch..rebase

  • When true, rebase the branch on top of the fetched branch,instead of merging the default branch from the default remote when"git pull" is run. See "pull.rebase" for doing this in a nonbranch-specific manner.

When merges, pass the —rebase-merges option to _git rebase_so that the local merge commits are included in the rebase (seegit-rebase[1] for details).

When preserve (deprecated in favor of merges), also pass—preserve-merges along to git rebase so that locally committed mergecommits will not be flattened by running git pull.

When the value is interactive, the rebase is run in interactive mode.

NOTE: this is a possibly dangerous operation; do not useit unless you understand the implications (see git-rebase[1]for details).

  • branch..description
  • Branch description, can be edited withgit branch —edit-description. Branch description isautomatically added in the format-patch cover letter orrequest-pull summary.

  • browser..cmd

  • Specify the command to invoke the specified browser. Thespecified command is evaluated in shell with the URLs passedas arguments. (See git-web{litdd}browse[1].)

  • browser..path

  • Override the path for the given tool that may be used tobrowse HTML help (see -w option in git-help[1]) or aworking repository in gitweb (see git-instaweb[1]).

  • checkout.defaultRemote

  • When you run git checkout _or _git switch and only have oneremote, it may implicitly fall back on checking out andtracking e.g. origin/. This stops working as soonas you have more than one remote with a __reference. This setting allows for setting the name of apreferred remote that should always win when it comes todisambiguation. The typical use-case is to set this toorigin.

Currently this is used by git-switch[1] andgit-checkout[1] when git checkout _or _git switch _will checkout the branch on another remote,and by git-worktree[1] when _git worktree add refers to aremote branch. This setting might be used for other checkout-likecommands or functionality in the future.

  • clean.requireForce
  • A boolean to make git-clean do nothing unless given -f,-i or -n. Defaults to true.

  • color.advice

  • A boolean to enable/disable color in hints (e.g. when a pushfailed, see advice.* for a list). May be set to always,false (or never) or auto (or true), in which case colorsare used only when the error output goes to a terminal. Ifunset, then the value of color.ui is used (auto by default).

  • color.advice.hint

  • Use customized color for hints.

  • color.blame.highlightRecent

  • This can be used to color the metadata of a blame line dependingon age of the line.

This setting should be set to a comma-separated list of color and date settings,starting and ending with a color, the dates should be set from oldest to newest.The metadata will be colored given the colors if the line was introducedbefore the given timestamp, overwriting older timestamped colors.

Instead of an absolute timestamp relative timestamps work as well, e.g.2.weeks.ago is valid to address anything older than 2 weeks.

It defaults to blue,12 month ago,white,1 month ago,red, which colorseverything older than one year blue, recent changes between one month andone year old are kept white, and lines introduced within the last month arecolored red.

  • color.blame.repeatedLines
  • Use the customized color for the part of git-blame output thatis repeated meta information per line (such as commit id,author name, date and timezone). Defaults to cyan.

  • color.branch

  • A boolean to enable/disable color in the output ofgit-branch[1]. May be set to always,false (or never) or auto (or true), in which case colors are usedonly when the output is to a terminal. If unset, then thevalue of color.ui is used (auto by default).

  • color.branch.

  • Use customized color for branch coloration. <slot> is one ofcurrent (the current branch), local (a local branch),remote (a remote-tracking branch in refs/remotes/),upstream (upstream tracking branch), plain (otherrefs).

  • color.diff

  • Whether to use ANSI escape sequences to add color to patches.If this is set to always, git-diff[1],git-log[1], and git-show[1] will use colorfor all patches. If it is set to true or auto, thosecommands will only use color when output is to the terminal.If unset, then the value of color.ui is used (auto bydefault).

This does not affect git-format-patch[1] or thegit-diff-* plumbing commands. Can be overridden on thecommand line with the —color[=<when>] option.

  • color.diff.
  • Use customized color for diff colorization. <slot> specifieswhich part of the patch to use the specified color, and is oneof context (context text - plain is a historical synonym),meta (metainformation), frag(hunk header), func (function in hunk header), old (removed lines),new (added lines), commit (commit headers), whitespace(highlighting whitespace errors), oldMoved (deleted lines),newMoved (added lines), oldMovedDimmed, oldMovedAlternative,oldMovedAlternativeDimmed, newMovedDimmed, newMovedAlternativenewMovedAlternativeDimmed (See the _setting of —color-moved_ in git-diff[1] for details),contextDimmed, oldDimmed, newDimmed, contextBold,oldBold, and newBold (see git-range-diff[1] for details).

  • color.decorate.

  • Use customized color for git log —decorate output. <slot> is oneof branch, remoteBranch, tag, stash or HEAD for localbranches, remote-tracking branches, tags, stash and HEAD, respectivelyand grafted for grafted commits.

  • color.grep

  • When set to always, always highlight matches. When false (ornever), never. When set to true or auto, use color onlywhen the output is written to the terminal. If unset, then thevalue of color.ui is used (auto by default).

  • color.grep.

  • Use customized color for grep colorization. <slot> specifies whichpart of the line to use the specified color, and is one of
  • context
  • non-matching text in context lines (when using -A, -B, or -C)

  • filename

  • filename prefix (when not using -h)

  • function

  • function name lines (when using -p)

  • lineNumber

  • line number prefix (when using -n)

  • column

  • column number prefix (when using —column)

  • match

  • matching text (same as setting matchContext and matchSelected)

  • matchContext

  • matching text in context lines

  • matchSelected

  • matching text in selected lines

  • selected

  • non-matching text in selected lines

  • separator

  • separators between fields on a line (:, -, and =)and between hunks ()
  • color.interactive
  • When set to always, always use colors for interactive promptsand displays (such as those used by "git-add —interactive" and"git-clean —interactive"). When false (or never), never.When set to true or auto, use colors only when the output isto the terminal. If unset, then the value of color.ui isused (auto by default).

  • color.interactive.

  • Use customized color for git add —interactive and git clean—interactive output. <slot> may be prompt, header, helpor error, for four distinct types of normal output frominteractive commands.

  • color.pager

  • A boolean to enable/disable colored output when the pager is inuse (default is true).

  • color.push

  • A boolean to enable/disable color in push errors. May be set toalways, false (or never) or auto (or true), in whichcase colors are used only when the error output goes to a terminal.If unset, then the value of color.ui is used (auto by default).

  • color.push.error

  • Use customized color for push errors.

  • color.remote

  • If set, keywords at the start of the line are highlighted. Thekeywords are "error", "warning", "hint" and "success", and arematched case-insensitively. May be set to always, false (ornever) or auto (or true). If unset, then the value ofcolor.ui is used (auto by default).

  • color.remote.

  • Use customized color for each remote keyword. <slot> may behint, warning, success or error which match thecorresponding keyword.

  • color.showBranch

  • A boolean to enable/disable color in the output ofgit-show-branch[1]. May be set to always,false (or never) or auto (or true), in which case colors are usedonly when the output is to a terminal. If unset, then thevalue of color.ui is used (auto by default).

  • color.status

  • A boolean to enable/disable color in the output ofgit-status[1]. May be set to always,false (or never) or auto (or true), in which case colors are usedonly when the output is to a terminal. If unset, then thevalue of color.ui is used (auto by default).

  • color.status.

  • Use customized color for status colorization. <slot> isone of header (the header text of the status message),added or updated (files which are added but not committed),changed (files which are changed but not added in the index),untracked (files which are not tracked by Git),branch (the current branch),nobranch (the color the no branch warning is shown in, defaultingto red),localBranch or remoteBranch (the local and remote branch names,respectively, when branch and tracking information is displayed in thestatus short-format), orunmerged (files which have unmerged changes).

  • color.transport

  • A boolean to enable/disable color when pushes are rejected. May beset to always, false (or never) or auto (or true), in whichcase colors are used only when the error output goes to a terminal.If unset, then the value of color.ui is used (auto by default).

  • color.transport.rejected

  • Use customized color when a push was rejected.

  • color.ui

  • This variable determines the default value for variables suchas color.diff and color.grep that control the use of colorper command family. Its scope will expand as more commands learnconfiguration to set a default for the —color option. Set itto false or never if you prefer Git commands not to usecolor unless enabled explicitly with some other configurationor the —color option. Set it to always if you want alloutput not intended for machine consumption to use color, totrue or auto (this is the default since Git 1.8.4) if youwant such output to use color when written to the terminal.

  • column.ui

  • Specify whether supported commands should output in columns.This variable consists of a list of tokens separated by spacesor commas:

These options control when the feature should be enabled(defaults to never):

  • always
  • always show in columns

  • never

  • never show in columns

  • auto

  • show in columns if the output is to the terminal

These options control layout (defaults to column). Setting anyof these implies always if none of always, never, or auto arespecified.

  • column
  • fill columns before rows

  • row

  • fill rows before columns

  • plain

  • show in one column

Finally, these options can be combined with a layout option (defaultsto nodense):

  • dense
  • make unequal size columns to utilize more space

  • nodense

  • make equal size columns
  • column.branch
  • Specify whether to output branch listing in git branch in columns.See column.ui for details.

  • column.clean

  • Specify the layout when list items in git clean -i, which alwaysshows files and directories in columns. See column.ui for details.

  • column.status

  • Specify whether to output untracked files in git status in columns.See column.ui for details.

  • column.tag

  • Specify whether to output tag listing in git tag in columns.See column.ui for details.

  • commit.cleanup

  • This setting overrides the default of the —cleanup option ingit commit. See git-commit[1] for details. Changing thedefault can be useful when you always want to keep lines that beginwith comment character # in your log message, in which case youwould do git config commit.cleanup whitespace (note that you willhave to remove the help lines that begin with # in the commit logtemplate yourself, if you do this).

  • commit.gpgSign

  • A boolean to specify whether all commits should be GPG signed.Use of this option when doing operations such as rebase canresult in a large number of commits being signed. It may beconvenient to use an agent to avoid typing your GPG passphraseseveral times.

  • commit.status

  • A boolean to enable/disable inclusion of status information in thecommit message template when using an editor to prepare the commitmessage. Defaults to true.

  • commit.template

  • Specify the pathname of a file to use as the template fornew commit messages.

  • commit.verbose

  • A boolean or int to specify the level of verbose with git commit.See git-commit[1].

  • credential.helper

  • Specify an external helper to be called when a username orpassword credential is needed; the helper may consult externalstorage to avoid prompting the user for the credentials. Notethat multiple helpers may be defined. See gitcredentials[7]for details.

  • credential.useHttpPath

  • When acquiring credentials, consider the "path" component of an httpor https URL to be important. Defaults to false. Seegitcredentials[7] for more information.

  • credential.username

  • If no username is set for a network authentication, use this usernameby default. See credential..* below, andgitcredentials[7].

  • credential..*

  • Any of the credential.* options above can be applied selectively tosome credentials. For example "credential.https://example.com.username"would set the default username only for https connections toexample.com. See gitcredentials[7] for details on how URLs arematched.

  • credentialCache.ignoreSIGHUP

  • Tell git-credential-cache—​daemon to ignore SIGHUP, instead of quitting.

  • completion.commands

  • This is only used by git-completion.bash to add or removecommands from the list of completed commands. Normally onlyporcelain commands and a few select others are completed. Youcan add more commands, separated by space, in thisvariable. Prefixing the command with - will remove it fromthe existing list.

  • diff.autoRefreshIndex

  • When using git diff to compare with work treefiles, do not consider stat-only change as changed.Instead, silently run git update-index —refresh toupdate the cached stat information for paths whosecontents in the work tree match the contents in theindex. This option defaults to true. Note that thisaffects only git diff Porcelain, and not lower leveldiff commands such as git diff-files.

  • diff.dirstat

  • A comma separated list of —dirstat parameters specifying thedefault behavior of the —dirstat option to git-diff[1]and friends. The defaults can be overridden on the command line(using —dirstat=<param1,param2,…>). The fallback defaults(when not changed by diff.dirstat) are changes,noncumulative,3.The following parameters are available:
  • changes
  • Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have beenremoved from the source, or added to the destination. This ignoresthe amount of pure code movements within a file. In other words,rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much as other changes.This is the default behavior when no parameter is given.

  • lines

  • Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based diffanalysis, and summing the removed/added line counts. (For binaryfiles, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary files have nonatural concept of lines). This is a more expensive —dirstatbehavior than the changes behavior, but it does count rearrangedlines within a file as much as other changes. The resulting outputis consistent with what you get from the other —*stat options.

  • files

  • Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files changed.Each changed file counts equally in the dirstat analysis. This isthe computationally cheapest —dirstat behavior, since it doesnot have to look at the file contents at all.

  • cumulative

  • Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well.Note that when using cumulative, the sum of the percentagesreported may exceed 100%. The default (non-cumulative) behavior canbe specified with the noncumulative parameter.

  • An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default).Directories contributing less than this percentage of the changesare not shown in the output.

Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoringdirectories with less than 10% of the total amount of changed files,and accumulating child directory counts in the parent directories:files,10,cumulative.

  • diff.statGraphWidth
  • Limit the width of the graph part in —stat output. If set, appliesto all commands generating —stat output except format-patch.

  • diff.context

  • Generate diffs with lines of context instead of the defaultof 3. This value is overridden by the -U option.

  • diff.interHunkContext

  • Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified numberof lines, thereby fusing the hunks that are close to each other.This value serves as the default for the —inter-hunk-contextcommand line option.

  • diff.external

  • If this config variable is set, diff generation is notperformed using the internal diff machinery, but using thegiven command. Can be overridden with the ‘GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF’environment variable. The command is called with parametersas described under "git Diffs" in git[1]. Note: ifyou want to use an external diff program only on a subset ofyour files, you might want to use gitattributes[5] instead.

  • diff.ignoreSubmodules

  • Sets the default value of —ignore-submodules. Note that thisaffects only git diff Porcelain, and not lower level diff_commands such as _git diff-files. git checkout_and _git switch also honorthis setting when reporting uncommitted changes. Setting it toall disables the submodule summary normally shown by git commit_and _git status when status.submoduleSummary is set unless it isoverridden by using the —ignore-submodules command-line option.The git submodule commands are not affected by this setting.

  • diff.mnemonicPrefix

  • If set, git diff uses a prefix pair that is different from thestandard "a/" and "b/" depending on what is being compared. Whenthis configuration is in effect, reverse diff output also swapsthe order of the prefixes:
  • git diff
  • compares the (i)ndex and the (w)ork tree;

  • git diff HEAD

  • compares a (c)ommit and the (w)ork tree;

  • git diff —cached

  • compares a (c)ommit and the (i)ndex;

  • git diff HEAD:file1 file2

  • compares an (o)bject and a (w)ork tree entity;

  • git diff —no-index a b

  • compares two non-git things (1) and (2).
  • diff.noprefix
  • If set, git diff does not show any source or destination prefix.

  • diff.orderFile

  • File indicating how to order files within a diff.See the -O option to git-diff[1] for details.If diff.orderFile is a relative pathname, it is treated asrelative to the top of the working tree.

  • diff.renameLimit

  • The number of files to consider when performing the copy/renamedetection; equivalent to the git diff option -l. This settinghas no effect if rename detection is turned off.

  • diff.renames

  • Whether and how Git detects renames. If set to "false",rename detection is disabled. If set to "true", basic renamedetection is enabled. If set to "copies" or "copy", Git willdetect copies, as well. Defaults to true. Note that thisaffects only git diff Porcelain like git-diff[1] andgit-log[1], and not lower level commands such asgit-diff-files[1].

  • diff.suppressBlankEmpty

  • A boolean to inhibit the standard behavior of printing a spacebefore each empty output line. Defaults to false.

  • diff.submodule

  • Specify the format in which differences in submodules areshown. The "short" format just shows the names of the commitsat the beginning and end of the range. The "log" format liststhe commits in the range like git-submodule[1] summarydoes. The "diff" format shows an inline diff of the changedcontents of the submodule. Defaults to "short".

  • diff.wordRegex

  • A POSIX Extended Regular Expression used to determine what is a "word"when performing word-by-word difference calculations. Charactersequences that match the regular expression are "words", all othercharacters are ignorable whitespace.

  • diff..command

  • The custom diff driver command. See gitattributes[5]for details.

  • diff..xfuncname

  • The regular expression that the diff driver should use torecognize the hunk header. A built-in pattern may also be used.See gitattributes[5] for details.

  • diff..binary

  • Set this option to true to make the diff driver treat files asbinary. See gitattributes[5] for details.

  • diff..textconv

  • The command that the diff driver should call to generate thetext-converted version of a file. The result of theconversion is used to generate a human-readable diff. Seegitattributes[5] for details.

  • diff..wordRegex

  • The regular expression that the diff driver should use tosplit words in a line. See gitattributes[5] fordetails.

  • diff..cachetextconv

  • Set this option to true to make the diff driver cache the textconversion outputs. See gitattributes[5] for details.

  • diff.tool

  • Controls which diff tool is used by git-difftool[1].This variable overrides the value configured in merge.tool.The list below shows the valid built-in values.Any other value is treated as a custom diff tool and requiresthat a corresponding difftool..cmd variable is defined.

  • diff.guitool

  • Controls which diff tool is used by git-difftool[1] whenthe -g/—gui flag is specified. This variable overrides the valueconfigured in merge.guitool. The list below shows the validbuilt-in values. Any other value is treated as a custom diff tooland requires that a corresponding difftool..cmd variableis defined.
  • araxis

  • bc

  • bc3

  • codecompare

  • deltawalker

  • diffmerge

  • diffuse

  • ecmerge

  • emerge

  • examdiff

  • guiffy

  • gvimdiff

  • gvimdiff2

  • gvimdiff3

  • kdiff3

  • kompare

  • meld

  • opendiff

  • p4merge

  • smerge

  • tkdiff

  • vimdiff

  • vimdiff2

  • vimdiff3

  • winmerge

  • xxdiff

  • diff.indentHeuristic
  • Set this option to true to enable experimental heuristicsthat shift diff hunk boundaries to make patches easier to read.

  • diff.algorithm

  • Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:
  • default, myers
  • The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the default.

  • minimal

  • Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff isproduced.

  • patience

  • Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.

  • histogram

  • This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "supportlow-occurrence common elements".
  • diff.wsErrorHighlight
  • Highlight whitespace errors in the context, old or newlines of the diff. Multiple values are separated by comma,none resets previous values, default reset the list tonew and all is a shorthand for old,new,context. Thewhitespace errors are colored with color.diff.whitespace.The command line option —ws-error-highlight=<kind>overrides this setting.

  • diff.colorMoved

  • If set to either a valid <mode> or a true value, moved linesin a diff are colored differently, for details of valid modessee —color-moved in git-diff[1]. If simply set totrue the default color mode will be used. When set to false,moved lines are not colored.

  • diff.colorMovedWS

  • When moved lines are colored using e.g. the diff.colorMoved setting,this option controls the <mode> how spaces are treatedfor details of valid modes see —color-moved-ws in git-diff[1].

  • difftool..path

  • Override the path for the given tool. This is useful in caseyour tool is not in the PATH.

  • difftool..cmd

  • Specify the command to invoke the specified diff tool.The specified command is evaluated in shell with the followingvariables available: LOCAL is set to the name of the temporaryfile containing the contents of the diff pre-image and _REMOTE_is set to the name of the temporary file containing the contentsof the diff post-image.

  • difftool.prompt

  • Prompt before each invocation of the diff tool.

  • fastimport.unpackLimit

  • If the number of objects imported by git-fast-import[1]is below this limit, then the objects will be unpacked intoloose object files. However if the number of imported objectsequals or exceeds this limit then the pack will be stored as apack. Storing the pack from a fast-import can make the importoperation complete faster, especially on slow filesystems. Ifnot set, the value of transfer.unpackLimit is used instead.

  • fetch.recurseSubmodules

  • This option can be either set to a boolean value or to on-demand.Setting it to a boolean changes the behavior of fetch and pull tounconditionally recurse into submodules when set to true or to notrecurse at all when set to false. When set to on-demand (the defaultvalue), fetch and pull will only recurse into a populated submodulewhen its superproject retrieves a commit that updates the submodule’sreference.

  • fetch.fsckObjects

  • If it is set to true, git-fetch-pack will check all fetchedobjects. See transfer.fsckObjects for what’schecked. Defaults to false. If not set, the value oftransfer.fsckObjects is used instead.

  • fetch.fsck.

  • Acts like fsck.<msg-id>, but is used bygit-fetch-pack[1] instead of git-fsck[1]. Seethe fsck.<msg-id> documentation for details.

  • fetch.fsck.skipList

  • Acts like fsck.skipList, but is used bygit-fetch-pack[1] instead of git-fsck[1]. Seethe fsck.skipList documentation for details.

  • fetch.unpackLimit

  • If the number of objects fetched over the Git nativetransfer is below thislimit, then the objects will be unpacked into loose objectfiles. However if the number of received objects equals orexceeds this limit then the received pack will be stored asa pack, after adding any missing delta bases. Storing thepack from a push can make the push operation complete faster,especially on slow filesystems. If not set, the value oftransfer.unpackLimit is used instead.

  • fetch.prune

  • If true, fetch will automatically behave as if the —pruneoption was given on the command line. See also remote.<name>.pruneand the PRUNING section of git-fetch[1].

  • fetch.pruneTags

  • If true, fetch will automatically behave as if therefs/tags/:refs/tags/ refspec was provided when pruning,if not set already. This allows for setting both this optionand fetch.prune to maintain a 1=1 mapping to upstreamrefs. See also remote.<name>.pruneTags and the PRUNINGsection of git-fetch[1].

  • fetch.output

  • Control how ref update status is printed. Valid values arefull and compact. Default value is full. See sectionOUTPUT in git-fetch[1] for detail.

  • fetch.negotiationAlgorithm

  • Control how information about the commits in the local repository issent when negotiating the contents of the packfile to be sent by theserver. Set to "skipping" to use an algorithm that skips commits in aneffort to converge faster, but may result in a larger-than-necessarypackfile; The default is "default" which instructs Git to use the default algorithmthat never skips commits (unless the server has acknowledged it or oneof its descendants).Unknown values will cause git fetch to error out.

See also the —negotiation-tip option for git-fetch[1].

  • fetch.showForcedUpdates
  • Set to false to enable —no-show-forced-updates ingit-fetch[1] and git-pull[1] commands.Defaults to true.

  • format.attach

  • Enable multipart/mixed attachments as the default forformat-patch. The value can also be a double quoted stringwhich will enable attachments as the default and set thevalue as the boundary. See the —attach option ingit-format-patch[1].

  • format.from

  • Provides the default value for the —from option to format-patch.Accepts a boolean value, or a name and email address. If false,format-patch defaults to —no-from, using commit authors directly inthe "From:" field of patch mails. If true, format-patch defaults to—from, using your committer identity in the "From:" field of patchmails and including a "From:" field in the body of the patch mail ifdifferent. If set to a non-boolean value, format-patch uses thatvalue instead of your committer identity. Defaults to false.

  • format.numbered

  • A boolean which can enable or disable sequence numbers in patchsubjects. It defaults to "auto" which enables it only if thereis more than one patch. It can be enabled or disabled for allmessages by setting it to "true" or "false". See —numberedoption in git-format-patch[1].

  • format.headers

  • Additional email headers to include in a patch to be submittedby mail. See git-format-patch[1].

  • format.to

  • format.cc
  • Additional recipients to include in a patch to be submittedby mail. See the —to and —cc options ingit-format-patch[1].

  • format.subjectPrefix

  • The default for format-patch is to output files with the _[PATCH]_subject prefix. Use this variable to change that prefix.

  • format.signature

  • The default for format-patch is to output a signature containingthe Git version number. Use this variable to change that default.Set this variable to the empty string ("") to suppresssignature generation.

  • format.signatureFile

  • Works just like format.signature except the contents of thefile specified by this variable will be used as the signature.

  • format.suffix

  • The default for format-patch is to output files with the suffix.patch. Use this variable to change that suffix (make sure toinclude the dot if you want it).

  • format.pretty

  • The default pretty format for log/show/whatchanged command,See git-log[1], git-show[1],git-whatchanged[1].

  • format.thread

  • The default threading style for git format-patch. Can bea boolean value, or shallow or deep. shallow threadingmakes every mail a reply to the head of the series,where the head is chosen from the cover letter, the—in-reply-to, and the first patch mail, in this order.deep threading makes every mail a reply to the previous one.A true boolean value is the same as shallow, and a falsevalue disables threading.

  • format.signOff

  • A boolean value which lets you enable the -s/—signoff option offormat-patch by default. Note: Adding the Signed-off-by: line to apatch should be a conscious act and means that you certify you havethe rights to submit this work under the same open source license.Please see the SubmittingPatches document for further discussion.

  • format.coverLetter

  • A boolean that controls whether to generate a cover-letter whenformat-patch is invoked, but in addition can be set to "auto", togenerate a cover-letter only when there’s more than one patch.

  • format.outputDirectory

  • Set a custom directory to store the resulting files instead of thecurrent working directory.

  • format.useAutoBase

  • A boolean value which lets you enable the —base=auto option offormat-patch by default.

  • format.notes

  • Provides the default value for the —notes option toformat-patch. Accepts a boolean value, or a ref which specifieswhere to get notes. If false, format-patch defaults to—no-notes. If true, format-patch defaults to —notes. Ifset to a non-boolean value, format-patch defaults to—notes=<ref>, where ref is the non-boolean value. Defaultsto false.

If one wishes to use the ref ref/notes/true, please use that literalinstead.

This configuration can be specified multiple times in order to allowmultiple notes refs to be included.

  • filter..clean
  • The command which is used to convert the content of a worktreefile to a blob upon checkin. See gitattributes[5] fordetails.

  • filter..smudge

  • The command which is used to convert the content of a blobobject to a worktree file upon checkout. Seegitattributes[5] for details.

  • fsck.

  • During fsck git may find issues with legacy data whichwouldn’t be generated by current versions of git, and whichwouldn’t be sent over the wire if transfer.fsckObjects wasset. This feature is intended to support working with legacyrepositories containing such data.

Setting fsck.<msg-id> will be picked up by git-fsck[1], butto accept pushes of such data set receive.fsck.<msg-id> instead, orto clone or fetch it set fetch.fsck.<msg-id>.

The rest of the documentation discusses fsck. for brevity, but thesame applies for the corresponding receive.fsck. andfetch.<msg-id>.*. variables.

Unlike variables like color.ui and core.editor thereceive.fsck.<msg-id> and fetch.fsck.<msg-id> variables will notfall back on the fsck.<msg-id> configuration if they aren’t set. Touniformly configure the same fsck settings in different circumstancesall three of them they must all set to the same values.

When fsck.<msg-id> is set, errors can be switched to warnings andvice versa by configuring the fsck.<msg-id> setting where the<msg-id> is the fsck message ID and the value is one of error,warn or ignore. For convenience, fsck prefixes the error/warningwith the message ID, e.g. "missingEmail: invalid author/committerline - missing email" means that setting fsck.missingEmail = ignorewill hide that issue.

In general, it is better to enumerate existing objects with problemswith fsck.skipList, instead of listing the kind of breakages theseproblematic objects share to be ignored, as doing the latter willallow new instances of the same breakages go unnoticed.

Setting an unknown fsck.<msg-id> value will cause fsck to die, butdoing the same for receive.fsck.<msg-id> and fetch.fsck.<msg-id>will only cause git to warn.

  • fsck.skipList
  • The path to a list of object names (i.e. one unabbreviated SHA-1 perline) that are known to be broken in a non-fatal way and shouldbe ignored. On versions of Git 2.20 and later comments (#), emptylines, and any leading and trailing whitespace is ignored. Everythingbut a SHA-1 per line will error out on older versions.

This feature is useful when an established project should be accepteddespite early commits containing errors that can be safely ignoredsuch as invalid committer email addresses. Note: corrupt objectscannot be skipped with this setting.

Like fsck.<msg-id> this variable has correspondingreceive.fsck.skipList and fetch.fsck.skipList variants.

Unlike variables like color.ui and core.editor thereceive.fsck.skipList and fetch.fsck.skipList variables will notfall back on the fsck.skipList configuration if they aren’t set. Touniformly configure the same fsck settings in different circumstancesall three of them they must all set to the same values.

Older versions of Git (before 2.20) documented that the object nameslist should be sorted. This was never a requirement, the object namescould appear in any order, but when reading the list we tracked whetherthe list was sorted for the purposes of an internal binary searchimplementation, which could save itself some work with an already sortedlist. Unless you had a humongous list there was no reason to go out ofyour way to pre-sort the list. After Git version 2.20 a hash implementationis used instead, so there’s now no reason to pre-sort the list.

  • gc.aggressiveDepth
  • The depth parameter used in the delta compressionalgorithm used by git gc —aggressive. This defaultsto 50, which is the default for the —depth option when—aggressive isn’t in use.

See the documentation for the —depth option ingit-repack[1] for more details.

  • gc.aggressiveWindow
  • The window size parameter used in the delta compressionalgorithm used by git gc —aggressive. This defaultsto 250, which is a much more aggressive window size thanthe default —window of 10.

See the documentation for the —window option ingit-repack[1] for more details.

  • gc.auto
  • When there are approximately more than this many looseobjects in the repository, git gc —auto will pack them.Some Porcelain commands use this command to perform alight-weight garbage collection from time to time. Thedefault value is 6700.

Setting this to 0 disables not only automatic packing based on thenumber of loose objects, but any other heuristic git gc —auto willotherwise use to determine if there’s work to do, such asgc.autoPackLimit.

  • gc.autoPackLimit
  • When there are more than this many packs that are notmarked with *.keep file in the repository, git gc—auto consolidates them into one larger pack. Thedefault value is 50. Setting this to 0 disables it.Setting gc.auto to 0 will also disable this.

See the gc.bigPackThreshold configuration variable below. When inuse, it’ll affect how the auto pack limit works.

  • gc.autoDetach
  • Make git gc —auto return immediately and run in backgroundif the system supports it. Default is true.

  • gc.bigPackThreshold

  • If non-zero, all packs larger than this limit are kept whengit gc is run. This is very similar to —keep-base-packexcept that all packs that meet the threshold are kept, notjust the base pack. Defaults to zero. Common unit suffixes ofk, m, or g are supported.

Note that if the number of kept packs is more than gc.autoPackLimit,this configuration variable is ignored, all packs except the base packwill be repacked. After this the number of packs should go belowgc.autoPackLimit and gc.bigPackThreshold should be respected again.

If the amount of memory estimated for git repack to run smoothly isnot available and gc.bigPackThreshold is not set, the largest packwill also be excluded (this is the equivalent of running git gc with—keep-base-pack).

  • gc.writeCommitGraph
  • If true, then gc will rewrite the commit-graph file whengit-gc[1] is run. When using git gc —autothe commit-graph will be updated if housekeeping isrequired. Default is false. See git-commit-graph[1]for details.

  • gc.logExpiry

  • If the file gc.log exists, then git gc —auto will printits content and exit with status zero instead of runningunless that file is more than gc.logExpiry old. Default is"1.day". See gc.pruneExpire for more ways to specify itsvalue.

  • gc.packRefs

  • Running git pack-refs in a repository renders itunclonable by Git versions prior to 1.5.1.2 over dumbtransports such as HTTP. This variable determines whethergit gc runs git pack-refs. This can be set to notbareto enable it within all non-bare repos or it can be set to aboolean value. The default is true.

  • gc.pruneExpire

  • When git gc is run, it will call prune —expire 2.weeks.ago.Override the grace period with this config variable. The value"now" may be used to disable this grace period and always pruneunreachable objects immediately, or "never" may be used tosuppress pruning. This feature helps prevent corruption whengit gc runs concurrently with another process writing to therepository; see the "NOTES" section of git-gc[1].

  • gc.worktreePruneExpire

  • When git gc is run, it callsgit worktree prune —expire 3.months.ago.This config variable can be used to set a different graceperiod. The value "now" may be used to disable the graceperiod and prune $GIT_DIR/worktrees immediately, or "never"may be used to suppress pruning.

  • gc.reflogExpire

  • gc..reflogExpire
  • git reflog expire removes reflog entries older thanthis time; defaults to 90 days. The value "now" expires allentries immediately, and "never" suppresses expirationaltogether. With "" (e.g."refs/stash") in the middle the setting applies only tothe refs that match the .

  • gc.reflogExpireUnreachable

  • gc..reflogExpireUnreachable
  • git reflog expire removes reflog entries older thanthis time and are not reachable from the current tip;defaults to 30 days. The value "now" expires all entriesimmediately, and "never" suppresses expiration altogether.With "" (e.g. "refs/stash")in the middle, the setting applies only to the refs thatmatch the .

These types of entries are generally created as a result of using gitcommit —amend or git rebase and are the commits prior to the amendor rebase occurring. Since these changes are not part of the currentproject most users will want to expire them sooner, which is why thedefault is more aggressive than gc.reflogExpire.

  • gc.rerereResolved
  • Records of conflicted merge you resolved earlier arekept for this many days when git rerere gc is run.You can also use more human-readable "1.month.ago", etc.The default is 60 days. See git-rerere[1].

  • gc.rerereUnresolved

  • Records of conflicted merge you have not resolved arekept for this many days when git rerere gc is run.You can also use more human-readable "1.month.ago", etc.The default is 15 days. See git-rerere[1].

  • gitcvs.commitMsgAnnotation

  • Append this string to each commit message. Set to empty stringto disable this feature. Defaults to "via git-CVS emulator".

  • gitcvs.enabled

  • Whether the CVS server interface is enabled for this repository.See git-cvsserver[1].

  • gitcvs.logFile

  • Path to a log file where the CVS server interface well…​ logsvarious stuff. See git-cvsserver[1].

  • gitcvs.usecrlfattr

  • If true, the server will look up the end-of-line conversionattributes for files to determine the -k modes to use. Ifthe attributes force Git to treat a file as text,the -k mode will be left blank so CVS clients willtreat it as text. If they suppress text conversion, the filewill be set with -kb mode, which suppresses any newline mungingthe client might otherwise do. If the attributes do not allowthe file type to be determined, then gitcvs.allBinary isused. See gitattributes[5].

  • gitcvs.allBinary

  • This is used if gitcvs.usecrlfattr does not resolvethe correct -kb mode to use. If true, allunresolved files are sent to the client inmode -kb. This causes the client to treat themas binary files, which suppresses any newline munging itotherwise might do. Alternatively, if it is set to "guess",then the contents of the file are examined to decide ifit is binary, similar to core.autocrlf.

  • gitcvs.dbName

  • Database used by git-cvsserver to cache revision informationderived from the Git repository. The exact meaning depends on theused database driver, for SQLite (which is the default driver) thisis a filename. Supports variable substitution (seegit-cvsserver[1] for details). May not contain semicolons (;).Default: %Ggitcvs.%m.sqlite

  • gitcvs.dbDriver

  • Used Perl DBI driver. You can specify any available driverfor this here, but it might not work. git-cvsserver is testedwith DBD::SQLite, reported to work with DBD::Pg, andreported not to work with DBD::mysql. Experimental feature.May not contain double colons (:). Default: SQLite.See git-cvsserver[1].

  • gitcvs.dbUser, gitcvs.dbPass

  • Database user and password. Only useful if setting gitcvs.dbDriver,since SQLite has no concept of database users and/or passwords.gitcvs.dbUser supports variable substitution (seegit-cvsserver[1] for details).

  • gitcvs.dbTableNamePrefix

  • Database table name prefix. Prepended to the names of anydatabase tables used, allowing a single database to be usedfor several repositories. Supports variable substitution (seegit-cvsserver[1] for details). Any non-alphabeticcharacters will be replaced with underscores.

All gitcvs variables except for gitcvs.usecrlfattr andgitcvs.allBinary can also be specified asgitcvs.<access_method>.<varname> (where _access_method_is one of "ext" and "pserver") to make them apply only for the givenaccess method.

  • gitweb.category
  • gitweb.description
  • gitweb.owner
  • gitweb.url
  • See gitweb[1] for description.

  • gitweb.avatar

  • gitweb.blame
  • gitweb.grep
  • gitweb.highlight
  • gitweb.patches
  • gitweb.pickaxe
  • gitweb.remote_heads
  • gitweb.showSizes
  • gitweb.snapshot
  • See gitweb.conf[5] for description.

  • grep.lineNumber

  • If set to true, enable -n option by default.

  • grep.column

  • If set to true, enable the —column option by default.

  • grep.patternType

  • Set the default matching behavior. Using a value of basic, extended,fixed, or perl will enable the —basic-regexp, —extended-regexp,—fixed-strings, or —perl-regexp option accordingly, while thevalue default will return to the default matching behavior.

  • grep.extendedRegexp

  • If set to true, enable —extended-regexp option by default. Thisoption is ignored when the grep.patternType option is set to a valueother than default.

  • grep.threads

  • Number of grep worker threads to use.See grep.threads in git-grep[1] for more information.

  • grep.fallbackToNoIndex

  • If set to true, fall back to git grep —no-index if git grepis executed outside of a git repository. Defaults to false.

  • gpg.program

  • Use this custom program instead of "gpg" found on $PATH whenmaking or verifying a PGP signature. The program must support thesame command-line interface as GPG, namely, to verify a detachedsignature, "gpg —verify $signature - <$file" is run, and theprogram is expected to signal a good signature by exiting withcode 0, and to generate an ASCII-armored detached signature, thestandard input of "gpg -bsau $key" is fed with the contents to besigned, and the program is expected to send the result to itsstandard output.

  • gpg.format

  • Specifies which key format to use when signing with —gpg-sign.Default is "openpgp" and another possible value is "x509".

  • gpg..program

  • Use this to customize the program used for the signing format youchose. (see gpg.program and gpg.format) gpg.program can stillbe used as a legacy synonym for gpg.openpgp.program. The defaultvalue for gpg.x509.program is "gpgsm".

  • gui.commitMsgWidth

  • Defines how wide the commit message window is in thegit-gui[1]. "75" is the default.

  • gui.diffContext

  • Specifies how many context lines should be used in calls to diffmade by the git-gui[1]. The default is "5".

  • gui.displayUntracked

  • Determines if git-gui[1] shows untracked filesin the file list. The default is "true".

  • gui.encoding

  • Specifies the default encoding to use for displaying offile contents in git-gui[1] and gitk[1].It can be overridden by setting the encoding attributefor relevant files (see gitattributes[5]).If this option is not set, the tools default to thelocale encoding.

  • gui.matchTrackingBranch

  • Determines if new branches created with git-gui[1] shoulddefault to tracking remote branches with matching names ornot. Default: "false".

  • gui.newBranchTemplate

  • Is used as suggested name when creating new branches using thegit-gui[1].

  • gui.pruneDuringFetch

  • "true" if git-gui[1] should prune remote-tracking branches whenperforming a fetch. The default value is "false".

  • gui.trustmtime

  • Determines if git-gui[1] should trust the file modificationtimestamp or not. By default the timestamps are not trusted.

  • gui.spellingDictionary

  • Specifies the dictionary used for spell checking commit messages inthe git-gui[1]. When set to "none" spell checking is turnedoff.

  • gui.fastCopyBlame

  • If true, git gui blame uses -C instead of -C -C for originallocation detection. It makes blame significantly faster on hugerepositories at the expense of less thorough copy detection.

  • gui.copyBlameThreshold

  • Specifies the threshold to use in git gui blame original locationdetection, measured in alphanumeric characters. See thegit-blame[1] manual for more information on copy detection.

  • gui.blamehistoryctx

  • Specifies the radius of history context in days to show ingitk[1] for the selected commit, when the Show HistoryContext menu item is invoked from git gui blame. If thisvariable is set to zero, the whole history is shown.

  • guitool..cmd

  • Specifies the shell command line to execute when the corresponding itemof the git-gui[1] Tools menu is invoked. This option ismandatory for every tool. The command is executed from the root ofthe working directory, and in the environment it receives the name ofthe tool as GITGUITOOL, the name of the currently selected file as_FILENAME, and the name of the current branch as CUR_BRANCH (ifthe head is detached, CUR_BRANCH is empty).

  • guitool..needsFile

  • Run the tool only if a diff is selected in the GUI. It guaranteesthat FILENAME is not empty.

  • guitool..noConsole

  • Run the command silently, without creating a window to display itsoutput.

  • guitool..noRescan

  • Don’t rescan the working directory for changes after the toolfinishes execution.

  • guitool..confirm

  • Show a confirmation dialog before actually running the tool.

  • guitool..argPrompt

  • Request a string argument from the user, and pass it to the toolthrough the ARGS environment variable. Since requesting anargument implies confirmation, the confirm option has no effectif this is enabled. If the option is set to true, yes, or 1,the dialog uses a built-in generic prompt; otherwise the exactvalue of the variable is used.

  • guitool..revPrompt

  • Request a single valid revision from the user, and set theREVISION environment variable. In other aspects this optionis similar to argPrompt, and can be used together with it.

  • guitool..revUnmerged

  • Show only unmerged branches in the revPrompt subdialog.This is useful for tools similar to merge or rebase, but notfor things like checkout or reset.

  • guitool..title

  • Specifies the title to use for the prompt dialog. The defaultis the tool name.

  • guitool..prompt

  • Specifies the general prompt string to display at the top ofthe dialog, before subsections for argPrompt and revPrompt.The default value includes the actual command.

  • help.browser

  • Specify the browser that will be used to display help in theweb format. See git-help[1].

  • help.format

  • Override the default help format used by git-help[1].Values man, info, web and html are supported. man isthe default. web and html are the same.

  • help.autoCorrect

  • Automatically correct and execute mistyped commands afterwaiting for the given number of deciseconds (0.1 sec). If morethan one command can be deduced from the entered text, nothingwill be executed. If the value of this option is negative,the corrected command will be executed immediately. If thevalue is 0 - the command will be just shown but not executed.This is the default.

  • help.htmlPath

  • Specify the path where the HTML documentation resides. File system pathsand URLs are supported. HTML pages will be prefixed with this path whenhelp is displayed in the web format. This defaults to the documentationpath of your Git installation.

  • http.proxy

  • Override the HTTP proxy, normally configured using the http_proxy,https_proxy, and all_proxy environment variables (see curl(1)). Inaddition to the syntax understood by curl, it is possible to specify aproxy string with a user name but no password, in which case git willattempt to acquire one in the same way it does for other credentials. Seegitcredentials[7] for more information. The syntax thus is[protocol://][user[:password]@]proxyhost[:port]. This can be overriddenon a per-remote basis; see remote..proxy

  • http.proxyAuthMethod

  • Set the method with which to authenticate against the HTTP proxy. Thisonly takes effect if the configured proxy string contains a user name part(i.e. is of the form user@host or user@host:port). This can beoverridden on a per-remote basis; see remote.<name>.proxyAuthMethod.Both can be overridden by the GIT_HTTP_PROXY_AUTHMETHOD environmentvariable. Possible values are:
  • anyauth - Automatically pick a suitable authentication method. It isassumed that the proxy answers an unauthenticated request with a 407status code and one or more Proxy-authenticate headers with supportedauthentication methods. This is the default.

  • basic - HTTP Basic authentication

  • digest - HTTP Digest authentication; this prevents the password from beingtransmitted to the proxy in clear text

  • negotiate - GSS-Negotiate authentication (compare the —negotiate optionof curl(1))

  • ntlm - NTLM authentication (compare the —ntlm option of curl(1))

  • http.emptyAuth
  • Attempt authentication without seeking a username or password. Thiscan be used to attempt GSS-Negotiate authentication without specifyinga username in the URL, as libcurl normally requires a username forauthentication.

  • http.delegation

  • Control GSSAPI credential delegation. The delegation is disabledby default in libcurl since version 7.21.7. Set parameter to tellthe server what it is allowed to delegate when it comes to usercredentials. Used with GSS/kerberos. Possible values are:
  • none - Don’t allow any delegation.

  • policy - Delegates if and only if the OK-AS-DELEGATE flag is set in theKerberos service ticket, which is a matter of realm policy.

  • always - Unconditionally allow the server to delegate.

  • http.extraHeader
  • Pass an additional HTTP header when communicating with a server. Ifmore than one such entry exists, all of them are added as extraheaders. To allow overriding the settings inherited from the systemconfig, an empty value will reset the extra headers to the empty list.

  • http.cookieFile

  • The pathname of a file containing previously stored cookie lines,which should be usedin the Git http session, if they match the server. The file formatof the file to read cookies from should be plain HTTP headers orthe Netscape/Mozilla cookie file format (see curl(1)).NOTE that the file specified with http.cookieFile is used only asinput unless http.saveCookies is set.

  • http.saveCookies

  • If set, store cookies received during requests to the file specified byhttp.cookieFile. Has no effect if http.cookieFile is unset.

  • http.version

  • Use the specified HTTP protocol version when communicating with a server.If you want to force the default. The available and default version dependon libcurl. Actually the possible values ofthis option are:
  • HTTP/2

  • HTTP/1.1

  • http.sslVersion
  • The SSL version to use when negotiating an SSL connection, if youwant to force the default. The available and default versiondepend on whether libcurl was built against NSS or OpenSSL and theparticular configuration of the crypto library in use. Internallythis sets the CURLOPT_SSL_VERSION option; see the libcurldocumentation for more details on the format of this option andfor the ssl version supported. Actually the possible values ofthis option are:
  • sslv2

  • sslv3

  • tlsv1

  • tlsv1.0

  • tlsv1.1

  • tlsv1.2

  • tlsv1.3

Can be overridden by the GIT_SSL_VERSION environment variable.To force git to use libcurl’s default ssl version and ignore anyexplicit http.sslversion option, set GIT_SSL_VERSION to theempty string.

  • http.sslCipherList
  • A list of SSL ciphers to use when negotiating an SSL connection.The available ciphers depend on whether libcurl was built againstNSS or OpenSSL and the particular configuration of the cryptolibrary in use. Internally this sets the _CURLOPT_SSL_CIPHER_LIST_option; see the libcurl documentation for more details on the formatof this list.

Can be overridden by the GIT_SSL_CIPHER_LIST environment variable.To force git to use libcurl’s default cipher list and ignore anyexplicit http.sslCipherList option, set GIT_SSL_CIPHER_LIST to theempty string.

  • http.sslVerify
  • Whether to verify the SSL certificate when fetching or pushingover HTTPS. Defaults to true. Can be overridden by theGIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY environment variable.

  • http.sslCert

  • File containing the SSL certificate when fetching or pushingover HTTPS. Can be overridden by the GIT_SSL_CERT environmentvariable.

  • http.sslKey

  • File containing the SSL private key when fetching or pushingover HTTPS. Can be overridden by the GIT_SSL_KEY environmentvariable.

  • http.sslCertPasswordProtected

  • Enable Git’s password prompt for the SSL certificate. OtherwiseOpenSSL will prompt the user, possibly many times, if thecertificate or private key is encrypted. Can be overridden by theGIT_SSL_CERT_PASSWORD_PROTECTED environment variable.

  • http.sslCAInfo

  • File containing the certificates to verify the peer with whenfetching or pushing over HTTPS. Can be overridden by theGIT_SSL_CAINFO environment variable.

  • http.sslCAPath

  • Path containing files with the CA certificates to verify the peerwith when fetching or pushing over HTTPS. Can be overriddenby the GIT_SSL_CAPATH environment variable.

  • http.sslBackend

  • Name of the SSL backend to use (e.g. "openssl" or "schannel").This option is ignored if cURL lacks support for choosing the SSLbackend at runtime.

  • http.schannelCheckRevoke

  • Used to enforce or disable certificate revocation checks in cURLwhen http.sslBackend is set to "schannel". Defaults to true ifunset. Only necessary to disable this if Git consistently errorsand the message is about checking the revocation status of acertificate. This option is ignored if cURL lacks support forsetting the relevant SSL option at runtime.

  • http.schannelUseSSLCAInfo

  • As of cURL v7.60.0, the Secure Channel backend can use thecertificate bundle provided via http.sslCAInfo, but that wouldoverride the Windows Certificate Store. Since this is not desirableby default, Git will tell cURL not to use that bundle by defaultwhen the schannel backend was configured via http.sslBackend,unless http.schannelUseSSLCAInfo overrides this behavior.

  • http.pinnedpubkey

  • Public key of the https service. It may either be the filename ofa PEM or DER encoded public key file or a string starting withsha256// followed by the base64 encoded sha256 hash of thepublic key. See also libcurl CURLOPT_PINNEDPUBLICKEY. git willexit with an error if this option is set but not supported bycURL.

  • http.sslTry

  • Attempt to use AUTH SSL/TLS and encrypted data transferswhen connecting via regular FTP protocol. This might be neededif the FTP server requires it for security reasons or you wishto connect securely whenever remote FTP server supports it.Default is false since it might trigger certificate verificationerrors on misconfigured servers.

  • http.maxRequests

  • How many HTTP requests to launch in parallel. Can be overriddenby the GIT_HTTP_MAX_REQUESTS environment variable. Default is 5.

  • http.minSessions

  • The number of curl sessions (counted across slots) to be kept acrossrequests. They will not be ended with curl_easy_cleanup() untilhttp_cleanup() is invoked. If USE_CURL_MULTI is not defined, thisvalue will be capped at 1. Defaults to 1.

  • http.postBuffer

  • Maximum size in bytes of the buffer used by smart HTTPtransports when POSTing data to the remote system.For requests larger than this buffer size, HTTP/1.1 andTransfer-Encoding: chunked is used to avoid creating amassive pack file locally. Default is 1 MiB, which issufficient for most requests.

  • http.lowSpeedLimit, http.lowSpeedTime

  • If the HTTP transfer speed is less than http.lowSpeedLimit_for longer than _http.lowSpeedTime seconds, the transfer is aborted.Can be overridden by the GIT_HTTP_LOW_SPEED_LIMIT andGIT_HTTP_LOW_SPEED_TIME environment variables.

  • http.noEPSV

  • A boolean which disables using of EPSV ftp command by curl.This can helpful with some "poor" ftp servers which don’tsupport EPSV mode. Can be overridden by the GIT_CURL_FTP_NO_EPSVenvironment variable. Default is false (curl will use EPSV).

  • http.userAgent

  • The HTTP USER_AGENT string presented to an HTTP server. The defaultvalue represents the version of the client Git such as git/1.7.1.This option allows you to override this value to a more common valuesuch as Mozilla/4.0. This may be necessary, for instance, ifconnecting through a firewall that restricts HTTP connections to a setof common USER_AGENT strings (but not including those like git/1.7.1).Can be overridden by the GIT_HTTP_USER_AGENT environment variable.

  • http.followRedirects

  • Whether git should follow HTTP redirects. If set to true, gitwill transparently follow any redirect issued by a server itencounters. If set to false, git will treat all redirects aserrors. If set to initial, git will follow redirects only forthe initial request to a remote, but not for subsequentfollow-up HTTP requests. Since git uses the redirected URL asthe base for the follow-up requests, this is generallysufficient. The default is initial.

  • http..*

  • Any of the http.* options above can be applied selectively to some URLs.For a config key to match a URL, each element of the config key iscompared to that of the URL, in the following order:
  • Scheme (e.g., https in https://example.com/). This fieldmust match exactly between the config key and the URL.

  • Host/domain name (e.g., example.com in https://example.com/).This field must match between the config key and the URL. It ispossible to specify a as part of the host name to match all subdomainsat this level. https://.example.com/ for example would matchhttps://foo.example.com/, but not https://foo.bar.example.com/.

  • Port number (e.g., 8080 in http://example.com:8080/).This field must match exactly between the config key and the URL.Omitted port numbers are automatically converted to the correctdefault for the scheme before matching.

  • Path (e.g., repo.git in https://example.com/repo.git). Thepath field of the config key must match the path field of the URLeither exactly or as a prefix of slash-delimited path elements. This meansa config key with path foo/ matches URL path foo/bar. A prefix can onlymatch on a slash (/) boundary. Longer matches take precedence (so a configkey with path foo/bar is a better match to URL path foo/bar than a configkey with just path foo/).

  • User name (e.g., user in https://user@example.com/repo.git). Ifthe config key has a user name it must match the user name in theURL exactly. If the config key does not have a user name, thatconfig key will match a URL with any user name (including none),but at a lower precedence than a config key with a user name.

The list above is ordered by decreasing precedence; a URL that matchesa config key’s path is preferred to one that matches its user name. For example,if the URL is https://user@example.com/foo/bar a config key match ofhttps://example.com/foo will be preferred over a config key match ofhttps://user@example.com.

All URLs are normalized before attempting any matching (the password part,if embedded in the URL, is always ignored for matching purposes) so thatequivalent URLs that are simply spelled differently will match properly.Environment variable settings always override any matches. The URLs that arematched against are those given directly to Git commands. This means any URLsvisited as a result of a redirection do not participate in matching.

  • i18n.commitEncoding
  • Character encoding the commit messages are stored in; Git itselfdoes not care per se, but this information is necessary e.g. whenimporting commits from emails or in the gitk graphical historybrowser (and possibly at other places in the future or in otherporcelains). See e.g. git-mailinfo[1]. Defaults to utf-8.

  • i18n.logOutputEncoding

  • Character encoding the commit messages are converted to whenrunning git log and friends.

  • imap.folder

  • The folder to drop the mails into, which is typically the Draftsfolder. For example: "INBOX.Drafts", "INBOX/Drafts" or"[Gmail]/Drafts". Required.

  • imap.tunnel

  • Command used to setup a tunnel to the IMAP server through whichcommands will be piped instead of using a direct network connectionto the server. Required when imap.host is not set.

  • imap.host

  • A URL identifying the server. Use an imap:// prefix for non-secureconnections and an imaps:// prefix for secure connections.Ignored when imap.tunnel is set, but required otherwise.

  • imap.user

  • The username to use when logging in to the server.

  • imap.pass

  • The password to use when logging in to the server.

  • imap.port

  • An integer port number to connect to on the server.Defaults to 143 for imap:// hosts and 993 for imaps:// hosts.Ignored when imap.tunnel is set.

  • imap.sslverify

  • A boolean to enable/disable verification of the server certificateused by the SSL/TLS connection. Default is true. Ignored whenimap.tunnel is set.

  • imap.preformattedHTML

  • A boolean to enable/disable the use of html encoding when sendinga patch. An html encoded patch will be bracketed with

    1. and have a content type of text/html. Ironically, enabling thisoption causes Thunderbird to send the patch as a plain/text,format=fixed email. Default is false.

  • imap.authMethod

  • Specify authenticate method for authentication with IMAP server.If Git was built with the NOCURL option, or if your curl version is olderthan 7.34.0, or if you’re running git-imap-send with the —no-curloption, the only supported method is _CRAM-MD5. If this is not setthen git imap-send uses the basic IMAP plaintext LOGIN command.

  • index.recordEndOfIndexEntries

  • Specifies whether the index file should include an "End Of IndexEntry" section. This reduces index load time on multiprocessormachines but produces a message "ignoring EOIE extension" whenreading the index using Git versions before 2.20. Defaults totrue if index.threads has been explicitly enabled, _false_otherwise.

  • index.recordOffsetTable

  • Specifies whether the index file should include an "Index EntryOffset Table" section. This reduces index load time onmultiprocessor machines but produces a message "ignoring IEOTextension" when reading the index using Git versions before 2.20.Defaults to true if index.threads has been explicitly enabled,false otherwise.

  • index.threads

  • Specifies the number of threads to spawn when loading the index.This is meant to reduce index load time on multiprocessor machines.Specifying 0 or true will cause Git to auto-detect the number ofCPU’s and set the number of threads accordingly. Specifying 1 orfalse will disable multithreading. Defaults to true.

  • index.version

  • Specify the version with which new index files should beinitialized. This does not affect existing repositories.

  • init.templateDir

  • Specify the directory from which templates will be copied.(See the "TEMPLATE DIRECTORY" section of git-init[1].)

  • instaweb.browser

  • Specify the program that will be used to browse your workingrepository in gitweb. See git-instaweb[1].

  • instaweb.httpd

  • The HTTP daemon command-line to start gitweb on your workingrepository. See git-instaweb[1].

  • instaweb.local

  • If true the web server started by git-instaweb[1] willbe bound to the local IP (127.0.0.1).

  • instaweb.modulePath

  • The default module path for git-instaweb[1] to useinstead of /usr/lib/apache2/modules. Only used if httpdis Apache.

  • instaweb.port

  • The port number to bind the gitweb httpd to. Seegit-instaweb[1].

  • interactive.singleKey

  • In interactive commands, allow the user to provide one-letterinput with a single key (i.e., without hitting enter).Currently this is used by the —patch mode ofgit-add[1], git-checkout[1],git-restore[1], git-commit[1],git-reset[1], and git-stash[1]. Note that thissetting is silently ignored if portable keystroke inputis not available; requires the Perl module Term::ReadKey.

  • interactive.diffFilter

  • When an interactive command (such as git add —patch) showsa colorized diff, git will pipe the diff through the shellcommand defined by this configuration variable. The command maymark up the diff further for human consumption, provided that itretains a one-to-one correspondence with the lines in theoriginal diff. Defaults to disabled (no filtering).

  • log.abbrevCommit

  • If true, makes git-log[1], git-show[1], andgit-whatchanged[1] assume —abbrev-commit. You mayoverride this option with —no-abbrev-commit.

  • log.date

  • Set the default date-time mode for the log command.Setting a value for log.date is similar to using git log's—date option. See git-log[1] for details.

  • log.decorate

  • Print out the ref names of any commits that are shown by the logcommand. If short is specified, the ref name prefixes refs/heads/,refs/tags/ and refs/remotes/ will not be printed. If full isspecified, the full ref name (including prefix) will be printed.If auto is specified, then if the output is going to a terminal,the ref names are shown as if short were given, otherwise no refnames are shown. This is the same as the —decorate optionof the git log.

  • log.follow

  • If true, git log will act as if the —follow option was used whena single is given. This has the same limitations as —follow,i.e. it cannot be used to follow multiple files and does not work wellon non-linear history.

  • log.graphColors

  • A list of colors, separated by commas, that can be used to drawhistory lines in git log —graph.

  • log.showRoot

  • If true, the initial commit will be shown as a big creation event.This is equivalent to a diff against an empty tree.Tools like git-log[1] or git-whatchanged[1], whichnormally hide the root commit will now show it. True by default.

  • log.showSignature

  • If true, makes git-log[1], git-show[1], andgit-whatchanged[1] assume —show-signature.

  • log.mailmap

  • If true, makes git-log[1], git-show[1], andgit-whatchanged[1] assume —use-mailmap, otherwiseassume —no-use-mailmap. True by default.

  • mailinfo.scissors

  • If true, makes git-mailinfo[1] (and thereforegit-am[1]) act by default as if the —scissors optionwas provided on the command-line. When active, this featuresremoves everything from the message body before a scissorsline (i.e. consisting mainly of ">8", "8<" and "-").

  • mailmap.file

  • The location of an augmenting mailmap file. The defaultmailmap, located in the root of the repository, is loadedfirst, then the mailmap file pointed to by this variable.The location of the mailmap file may be in a repositorysubdirectory, or somewhere outside of the repository itself.See git-shortlog[1] and git-blame[1].

  • mailmap.blob

  • Like mailmap.file, but consider the value as a reference to ablob in the repository. If both mailmap.file andmailmap.blob are given, both are parsed, with entries frommailmap.file taking precedence. In a bare repository, thisdefaults to HEAD:.mailmap. In a non-bare repository, itdefaults to empty.

  • man.viewer

  • Specify the programs that may be used to display help in theman format. See git-help[1].

  • man..cmd

  • Specify the command to invoke the specified man viewer. Thespecified command is evaluated in shell with the man pagepassed as argument. (See git-help[1].)

  • man..path

  • Override the path for the given tool that may be used todisplay help in the man format. See git-help[1].

  • merge.conflictStyle

  • Specify the style in which conflicted hunks are written out toworking tree files upon merge. The default is "merge", whichshows a <<<<<<< conflict marker, changes made by one side,a ======= marker, changes made by the other side, and thena >>>>>>> marker. An alternate style, "diff3", adds a |||||||marker and the original text before the ======= marker.

  • merge.defaultToUpstream

  • If merge is called without any commit argument, merge the upstreambranches configured for the current branch by using their lastobserved values stored in their remote-tracking branches.The values of the branch.<current branch>.merge that name thebranches at the remote named by branch.<current branch>.remoteare consulted, and then they are mapped via remote.<remote>.fetchto their corresponding remote-tracking branches, and the tips ofthese tracking branches are merged.

  • merge.ff

  • By default, Git does not create an extra merge commit when merginga commit that is a descendant of the current commit. Instead, thetip of the current branch is fast-forwarded. When set to false,this variable tells Git to create an extra merge commit in sucha case (equivalent to giving the —no-ff option from the commandline). When set to only, only such fast-forward merges areallowed (equivalent to giving the —ff-only option from thecommand line).

  • merge.verifySignatures

  • If true, this is equivalent to the —verify-signatures commandline option. See git-merge[1] for details.

  • merge.branchdesc

  • In addition to branch names, populate the log message withthe branch description text associated with them. Defaultsto false.

  • merge.log

  • In addition to branch names, populate the log message with atmost the specified number of one-line descriptions from theactual commits that are being merged. Defaults to false, andtrue is a synonym for 20.

  • merge.renameLimit

  • The number of files to consider when performing rename detectionduring a merge; if not specified, defaults to the value ofdiff.renameLimit. This setting has no effect if rename detectionis turned off.

  • merge.renames

  • Whether Git detects renames. If set to "false", rename detectionis disabled. If set to "true", basic rename detection is enabled.Defaults to the value of diff.renames.

  • merge.directoryRenames

  • Whether Git detects directory renames, affecting what happens atmerge time to new files added to a directory on one side ofhistory when that directory was renamed on the other side ofhistory. If merge.directoryRenames is set to "false", directoryrename detection is disabled, meaning that such new files will beleft behind in the old directory. If set to "true", directoryrename detection is enabled, meaning that such new files will bemoved into the new directory. If set to "conflict", a conflictwill be reported for such paths. If merge.renames is false,merge.directoryRenames is ignored and treated as false. Defaultsto "conflict".

  • merge.renormalize

  • Tell Git that canonical representation of files in therepository has changed over time (e.g. earlier commits recordtext files with CRLF line endings, but recent ones use LF lineendings). In such a repository, Git can convert the datarecorded in commits to a canonical form before performing amerge to reduce unnecessary conflicts. For more information,see section "Merging branches with differing checkin/checkoutattributes" in gitattributes[5].

  • merge.stat

  • Whether to print the diffstat between ORIG_HEAD and the merge resultat the end of the merge. True by default.

  • merge.tool

  • Controls which merge tool is used by git-mergetool[1].The list below shows the valid built-in values.Any other value is treated as a custom merge tool and requiresthat a corresponding mergetool..cmd variable is defined.

  • merge.guitool

  • Controls which merge tool is used by git-mergetool[1] when the-g/—gui flag is specified. The list below shows the valid built-in values.Any other value is treated as a custom merge tool and requires that acorresponding mergetool..cmd variable is defined.
  • araxis

  • bc

  • bc3

  • codecompare

  • deltawalker

  • diffmerge

  • diffuse

  • ecmerge

  • emerge

  • examdiff

  • guiffy

  • gvimdiff

  • gvimdiff2

  • gvimdiff3

  • kdiff3

  • meld

  • opendiff

  • p4merge

  • smerge

  • tkdiff

  • tortoisemerge

  • vimdiff

  • vimdiff2

  • vimdiff3

  • winmerge

  • xxdiff

  • merge.verbosity
  • Controls the amount of output shown by the recursive mergestrategy. Level 0 outputs nothing except a final errormessage if conflicts were detected. Level 1 outputs onlyconflicts, 2 outputs conflicts and file changes. Level 5 andabove outputs debugging information. The default is level 2.Can be overridden by the GIT_MERGE_VERBOSITY environment variable.

  • merge..name

  • Defines a human-readable name for a custom low-levelmerge driver. See gitattributes[5] for details.

  • merge..driver

  • Defines the command that implements a custom low-levelmerge driver. See gitattributes[5] for details.

  • merge..recursive

  • Names a low-level merge driver to be used whenperforming an internal merge between common ancestors.See gitattributes[5] for details.

  • mergetool..path

  • Override the path for the given tool. This is useful in caseyour tool is not in the PATH.

  • mergetool..cmd

  • Specify the command to invoke the specified merge tool. Thespecified command is evaluated in shell with the followingvariables available: BASE is the name of a temporary filecontaining the common base of the files to be merged, if available;LOCAL is the name of a temporary file containing the contents ofthe file on the current branch; REMOTE is the name of a temporaryfile containing the contents of the file from the branch beingmerged; MERGED contains the name of the file to which the mergetool should write the results of a successful merge.

  • mergetool..trustExitCode

  • For a custom merge command, specify whether the exit code ofthe merge command can be used to determine whether the merge wassuccessful. If this is not set to true then the merge target filetimestamp is checked and the merge assumed to have been successfulif the file has been updated, otherwise the user is prompted toindicate the success of the merge.

  • mergetool.meld.hasOutput

  • Older versions of meld do not support the —output option.Git will attempt to detect whether meld supports —outputby inspecting the output of meld —help. Configuringmergetool.meld.hasOutput will make Git skip these checks anduse the configured value instead. Setting mergetool.meld.hasOutputto true tells Git to unconditionally use the —output option,and false avoids using —output.

  • mergetool.keepBackup

  • After performing a merge, the original file with conflict markerscan be saved as a file with a .orig extension. If this variableis set to false then this file is not preserved. Defaults totrue (i.e. keep the backup files).

  • mergetool.keepTemporaries

  • When invoking a custom merge tool, Git uses a set of temporaryfiles to pass to the tool. If the tool returns an error and thisvariable is set to true, then these temporary files will bepreserved, otherwise they will be removed after the tool hasexited. Defaults to false.

  • mergetool.writeToTemp

  • Git writes temporary BASE, LOCAL, and REMOTE versions ofconflicting files in the worktree by default. Git will attemptto use a temporary directory for these files when set true.Defaults to false.

  • mergetool.prompt

  • Prompt before each invocation of the merge resolution program.

  • notes.mergeStrategy

  • Which merge strategy to choose by default when resolving notesconflicts. Must be one of manual, ours, theirs, union, orcat_sort_uniq. Defaults to manual. See "NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES"section of git-notes[1] for more information on each strategy.

  • notes..mergeStrategy

  • Which merge strategy to choose when doing a notes merge intorefs/notes/. This overrides the more general"notes.mergeStrategy". See the "NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES" section ingit-notes[1] for more information on the available strategies.

  • notes.displayRef

  • The (fully qualified) refname from which to show notes whenshowing commit messages. The value of this variable can be setto a glob, in which case notes from all matching refs will beshown. You may also specify this configuration variableseveral times. A warning will be issued for refs that do notexist, but a glob that does not match any refs is silentlyignored.

This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REFenvironment variable, which must be a colon separated list of refs orglobs.

The effective value of "core.notesRef" (possibly overridden byGIT_NOTES_REF) is also implicitly added to the list of refs to bedisplayed.

  • notes.rewrite.
  • When rewriting commits with (currently amend orrebase) and this variable is set to true, Gitautomatically copies your notes from the original to therewritten commit. Defaults to true, but see"notes.rewriteRef" below.

  • notes.rewriteMode

  • When copying notes during a rewrite (see the"notes.rewrite." option), determines what to do ifthe target commit already has a note. Must be one ofoverwrite, concatenate, cat_sort_uniq, or ignore.Defaults to concatenate.

This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_MODEenvironment variable.

  • notes.rewriteRef
  • When copying notes during a rewrite, specifies the (fullyqualified) ref whose notes should be copied. The ref may be aglob, in which case notes in all matching refs will be copied.You may also specify this configuration several times.

Does not have a default value; you must configure this variable toenable note rewriting. Set it to refs/notes/commits to enablerewriting for the default commit notes.

This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REFenvironment variable, which must be a colon separated list of refs orglobs.

  • pack.window
  • The size of the window used by git-pack-objects[1] when nowindow size is given on the command line. Defaults to 10.

  • pack.depth

  • The maximum delta depth used by git-pack-objects[1] when nomaximum depth is given on the command line. Defaults to 50.Maximum value is 4095.

  • pack.windowMemory

  • The maximum size of memory that is consumed by each threadin git-pack-objects[1] for pack window memory whenno limit is given on the command line. The value can besuffixed with "k", "m", or "g". When left unconfigured (orset explicitly to 0), there will be no limit.

  • pack.compression

  • An integer -1..9, indicating the compression level for objectsin a pack file. -1 is the zlib default. 0 means nocompression, and 1..9 are various speed/size tradeoffs, 9 beingslowest. If not set, defaults to core.compression. If that isnot set, defaults to -1, the zlib default, which is "a defaultcompromise between speed and compression (currently equivalentto level 6)."

Note that changing the compression level will not automatically recompressall existing objects. You can force recompression by passing the -F optionto git-repack[1].

  • pack.island
  • An extended regular expression configuring a set of deltaislands. See "DELTA ISLANDS" in git-pack-objects[1]for details.

  • pack.islandCore

  • Specify an island name which gets to have its objects bepacked first. This creates a kind of pseudo-pack at the frontof one pack, so that the objects from the specified island arehopefully faster to copy into any pack that should be servedto a user requesting these objects. In practice this meansthat the island specified should likely correspond to what isthe most commonly cloned in the repo. See also "DELTA ISLANDS"in git-pack-objects[1].

  • pack.deltaCacheSize

  • The maximum memory in bytes used for caching deltas ingit-pack-objects[1] before writing them out to a pack.This cache is used to speed up the writing object phase by nothaving to recompute the final delta result once the best matchfor all objects is found. Repacking large repositories on machineswhich are tight with memory might be badly impacted by this though,especially if this cache pushes the system into swapping.A value of 0 means no limit. The smallest size of 1 byte may beused to virtually disable this cache. Defaults to 256 MiB.

  • pack.deltaCacheLimit

  • The maximum size of a delta, that is cached ingit-pack-objects[1]. This cache is used to speed up thewriting object phase by not having to recompute the final deltaresult once the best match for all objects is found.Defaults to 1000. Maximum value is 65535.

  • pack.threads

  • Specifies the number of threads to spawn when searching for bestdelta matches. This requires that git-pack-objects[1]be compiled with pthreads otherwise this option is ignored with awarning. This is meant to reduce packing time on multiprocessormachines. The required amount of memory for the delta search windowis however multiplied by the number of threads.Specifying 0 will cause Git to auto-detect the number of CPU’sand set the number of threads accordingly.

  • pack.indexVersion

  • Specify the default pack index version. Valid values are 1 forlegacy pack index used by Git versions prior to 1.5.2, and 2 forthe new pack index with capabilities for packs larger than 4 GBas well as proper protection against the repacking of corruptedpacks. Version 2 is the default. Note that version 2 is enforcedand this config option ignored whenever the corresponding pack islarger than 2 GB.

If you have an old Git that does not understand the version 2 .idx file,cloning or fetching over a non native protocol (e.g. "http")that will copy both .pack file and corresponding .idx file from theother side may give you a repository that cannot be accessed with yourolder version of Git. If the .pack file is smaller than 2 GB, however,you can use git-index-pack[1] on the .pack file to regeneratethe .idx file.

  • pack.packSizeLimit
  • The maximum size of a pack. This setting only affectspacking to a file when repacking, i.e. the git:// protocolis unaffected. It can be overridden by the —max-pack-sizeoption of git-repack[1]. Reaching this limit resultsin the creation of multiple packfiles; which in turn preventsbitmaps from being created.The minimum size allowed is limited to 1 MiB.The default is unlimited.Common unit suffixes of k, m, or g aresupported.

  • pack.useBitmaps

  • When true, git will use pack bitmaps (if available) when packingto stdout (e.g., during the server side of a fetch). Defaults totrue. You should not generally need to turn this off unlessyou are debugging pack bitmaps.

  • pack.useSparse

  • When true, git will default to using the —sparse option ingit pack-objects when the —revs option is present. Thisalgorithm only walks trees that appear in paths that introduce newobjects. This can have significant performance benefits whencomputing a pack to send a small change. However, it is possiblethat extra objects are added to the pack-file if the includedcommits contain certain types of direct renames.

  • pack.writeBitmaps (deprecated)

  • This is a deprecated synonym for repack.writeBitmaps.

  • pack.writeBitmapHashCache

  • When true, git will include a "hash cache" section in the bitmapindex (if one is written). This cache can be used to feed git’sdelta heuristics, potentially leading to better deltas betweenbitmapped and non-bitmapped objects (e.g., when serving a fetchbetween an older, bitmapped pack and objects that have beenpushed since the last gc). The downside is that it consumes 4bytes per object of disk space. Defaults to true.

  • pager.

  • If the value is boolean, turns on or off pagination of theoutput of a particular Git subcommand when writing to a tty.Otherwise, turns on pagination for the subcommand using thepager specified by the value of pager.<cmd>. If —paginateor —no-pager is specified on the command line, it takesprecedence over this option. To disable pagination for allcommands, set core.pager or GIT_PAGER to cat.

  • pretty.

  • Alias for a —pretty= format string, as specified ingit-log[1]. Any aliases defined here can be used justas the built-in pretty formats could. For example,running git config pretty.changelog "format: %H %s"would cause the invocation git log —pretty=changelogto be equivalent to running git log "—pretty=format: %H %s".Note that an alias with the same name as a built-in formatwill be silently ignored.

  • protocol.allow

  • If set, provide a user defined default policy for all protocols whichdon’t explicitly have a policy (protocol.<name>.allow). By default,if unset, known-safe protocols (http, https, git, ssh, file) have adefault policy of always, known-dangerous protocols (ext) have adefault policy of never, and all other protocols have a defaultpolicy of user. Supported policies:
  • always - protocol is always able to be used.

  • never - protocol is never able to be used.

  • user - protocol is only able to be used when GIT_PROTOCOL_FROM_USER iseither unset or has a value of 1. This policy should be used when you want aprotocol to be directly usable by the user but don’t want it used by commands whichexecute clone/fetch/push commands without user input, e.g. recursivesubmodule initialization.

  • protocol..allow
  • Set a policy to be used by protocol <name> with clone/fetch/pushcommands. See protocol.allow above for the available policies.

The protocol names currently used by git are:

  • file: any local file-based path (including file:// URLs,or local paths)

  • git: the anonymous git protocol over a direct TCPconnection (or proxy, if configured)

  • ssh: git over ssh (including host:path syntax,ssh://, etc).

  • http: git over http, both "smart http" and "dumb http".Note that this does not include https; if you want to configureboth, you must do so individually.

  • any external helpers are named by their protocol (e.g., usehg to allow the git-remote-hg helper)

  • protocol.version
  • Experimental. If set, clients will attempt to communicate with aserver using the specified protocol version. If unset, noattempt will be made by the client to communicate using aparticular protocol version, this results in protocol version 0being used.Supported versions:
  • 0 - the original wire protocol.

  • 1 - the original wire protocol with the addition of a version stringin the initial response from the server.

  • 2 - wire protocol version 2.

  • pull.ff
  • By default, Git does not create an extra merge commit when merginga commit that is a descendant of the current commit. Instead, thetip of the current branch is fast-forwarded. When set to false,this variable tells Git to create an extra merge commit in sucha case (equivalent to giving the —no-ff option from the commandline). When set to only, only such fast-forward merges areallowed (equivalent to giving the —ff-only option from thecommand line). This setting overrides merge.ff when pulling.

  • pull.rebase

  • When true, rebase branches on top of the fetched branch, insteadof merging the default branch from the default remote when "gitpull" is run. See "branch..rebase" for setting this on aper-branch basis.

When merges, pass the —rebase-merges option to _git rebase_so that the local merge commits are included in the rebase (seegit-rebase[1] for details).

When preserve (deprecated in favor of merges), also pass—preserve-merges along to git rebase so that locally committed mergecommits will not be flattened by running git pull.

When the value is interactive, the rebase is run in interactive mode.

NOTE: this is a possibly dangerous operation; do not useit unless you understand the implications (see git-rebase[1]for details).

  • pull.octopus
  • The default merge strategy to use when pulling multiple branchesat once.

  • pull.twohead

  • The default merge strategy to use when pulling a single branch.

  • push.default

  • Defines the action git push should take if no refspec isexplicitly given. Different values are well-suited forspecific workflows; for instance, in a purely central workflow(i.e. the fetch source is equal to the push destination),upstream is probably what you want. Possible values are:
  • nothing - do not push anything (error out) unless a refspec isexplicitly given. This is primarily meant for people who want toavoid mistakes by always being explicit.

  • current - push the current branch to update a branch with the samename on the receiving end. Works in both central and non-centralworkflows.

  • upstream - push the current branch back to the branch whosechanges are usually integrated into the current branch (which iscalled @{upstream}). This mode only makes sense if you arepushing to the same repository you would normally pull from(i.e. central workflow).

  • tracking - This is a deprecated synonym for upstream.

  • simple - in centralized workflow, work like upstream with anadded safety to refuse to push if the upstream branch’s name isdifferent from the local one.

When pushing to a remote that is different from the remote you normallypull from, work as current. This is the safest option and is suitedfor beginners.

This mode has become the default in Git 2.0.

  • matching - push all branches having the same name on both ends.This makes the repository you are pushing to remember the set ofbranches that will be pushed out (e.g. if you always push maint_and _master there and no other branches, the repository you pushto will have these two branches, and your local maint andmaster will be pushed there).

To use this mode effectively, you have to make sure all thebranches you would push out are ready to be pushed out beforerunning git push, as the whole point of this mode is to allow youto push all of the branches in one go. If you usually finish workon only one branch and push out the result, while other branches areunfinished, this mode is not for you. Also this mode is notsuitable for pushing into a shared central repository, as otherpeople may add new branches there, or update the tip of existingbranches outside your control.

This used to be the default, but not since Git 2.0 (simple is thenew default).

  • push.followTags
  • If set to true enable —follow-tags option by default. Youmay override this configuration at time of push by specifying—no-follow-tags.

  • push.gpgSign

  • May be set to a boolean value, or the string if-asked. A truevalue causes all pushes to be GPG signed, as if —signed ispassed to git-push[1]. The string if-asked causespushes to be signed if the server supports it, as if—signed=if-asked is passed to git push. A false value mayoverride a value from a lower-priority config file. An explicitcommand-line flag always overrides this config option.

  • push.pushOption

  • When no —push-option=<option> argument is given from thecommand line, git push behaves as if each ofthis variable is given as —push-option=<value>.

This is a multi-valued variable, and an empty value can be used in ahigher priority configuration file (e.g. .git/config in arepository) to clear the values inherited from a lower priorityconfiguration files (e.g. $HOME/.gitconfig).

Example:

/etc/gitconfig push.pushoption = a push.pushoption = b

~/.gitconfig push.pushoption = c

repo/.git/config push.pushoption = push.pushoption = b

This will result in only b (a and c are cleared).

  • push.recurseSubmodules
  • Make sure all submodule commits used by the revisions to be pushedare available on a remote-tracking branch. If the value is check_then Git will verify that all submodule commits that changed in therevisions to be pushed are available on at least one remote of thesubmodule. If any commits are missing, the push will be aborted andexit with non-zero status. If the value is _on-demand then allsubmodules that changed in the revisions to be pushed will bepushed. If on-demand was not able to push all necessary revisionsit will also be aborted and exit with non-zero status. If the valueis no then default behavior of ignoring submodules when pushingis retained. You may override this configuration at time of push byspecifying —recurse-submodules=check|on-demand|no.

  • rebase.useBuiltin

  • Unused configuration variable. Used in Git versions 2.20 and2.21 as an escape hatch to enable the legacy shellscriptimplementation of rebase. Now the built-in rewrite of it in Cis always used. Setting this will emit a warning, to alert anyremaining users that setting this now does nothing.

  • rebase.stat

  • Whether to show a diffstat of what changed upstream since the lastrebase. False by default.

  • rebase.autoSquash

  • If set to true enable —autosquash option by default.

  • rebase.autoStash

  • When set to true, automatically create a temporary stash entrybefore the operation begins, and apply it after the operationends. This means that you can run rebase on a dirty worktree.However, use with care: the final stash application after asuccessful rebase might result in non-trivial conflicts.This option can be overridden by the —no-autostash and—autostash options of git-rebase[1].Defaults to false.

  • rebase.missingCommitsCheck

  • If set to "warn", git rebase -i will print a warning if somecommits are removed (e.g. a line was deleted), however therebase will still proceed. If set to "error", it will printthe previous warning and stop the rebase, git rebase—edit-todo can then be used to correct the error. If set to"ignore", no checking is done.To drop a commit without warning or error, use the dropcommand in the todo list.Defaults to "ignore".

  • rebase.instructionFormat

  • A format string, as specified in git-log[1], to be used for thetodo list during an interactive rebase. The format willautomatically have the long commit hash prepended to the format.

  • rebase.abbreviateCommands

  • If set to true, git rebase will use abbreviated command names in thetodo list resulting in something like this:
  1. p deadbee The oneline of the commit
  2. p fa1afe1 The oneline of the next commit
  3. ...

instead of:

  1. pick deadbee The oneline of the commit
  2. pick fa1afe1 The oneline of the next commit
  3. ...

Defaults to false.

  • rebase.rescheduleFailedExec
  • Automatically reschedule exec commands that failed. This only makessense in interactive mode (or when an —exec option was provided).This is the same as specifying the —reschedule-failed-exec option.

  • receive.advertiseAtomic

  • By default, git-receive-pack will advertise the atomic pushcapability to its clients. If you don’t want to advertise thiscapability, set this variable to false.

  • receive.advertisePushOptions

  • When set to true, git-receive-pack will advertise the push optionscapability to its clients. False by default.

  • receive.autogc

  • By default, git-receive-pack will run "git-gc —auto" afterreceiving data from git-push and updating refs. You can stopit by setting this variable to false.

  • receive.certNonceSeed

  • By setting this variable to a string, git receive-packwill accept a git push —signed and verifies it by usinga "nonce" protected by HMAC using this string as a secretkey.

  • receive.certNonceSlop

  • When a git push —signed sent a push certificate with a"nonce" that was issued by a receive-pack serving the samerepository within this many seconds, export the "nonce"found in the certificate to GIT_PUSH_CERT_NONCE to thehooks (instead of what the receive-pack asked the sendingside to include). This may allow writing checks inpre-receive and post-receive a bit easier. Instead ofchecking GIT_PUSH_CERT_NONCE_SLOP environment variablethat records by how many seconds the nonce is stale todecide if they want to accept the certificate, they onlycan check GIT_PUSH_CERT_NONCE_STATUS is OK.

  • receive.fsckObjects

  • If it is set to true, git-receive-pack will check all receivedobjects. See transfer.fsckObjects for what’s checked.Defaults to false. If not set, the value oftransfer.fsckObjects is used instead.

  • receive.fsck.

  • Acts like fsck.<msg-id>, but is used bygit-receive-pack[1] instead ofgit-fsck[1]. See the fsck.<msg-id> documentation fordetails.

  • receive.fsck.skipList

  • Acts like fsck.skipList, but is used bygit-receive-pack[1] instead ofgit-fsck[1]. See the fsck.skipList documentation fordetails.

  • receive.keepAlive

  • After receiving the pack from the client, receive-pack mayproduce no output (if —quiet was specified) while processingthe pack, causing some networks to drop the TCP connection.With this option set, if receive-pack does not transmitany data in this phase for receive.keepAlive seconds, it willsend a short keepalive packet. The default is 5 seconds; setto 0 to disable keepalives entirely.

  • receive.unpackLimit

  • If the number of objects received in a push is below thislimit then the objects will be unpacked into loose objectfiles. However if the number of received objects equals orexceeds this limit then the received pack will be stored asa pack, after adding any missing delta bases. Storing thepack from a push can make the push operation complete faster,especially on slow filesystems. If not set, the value oftransfer.unpackLimit is used instead.

  • receive.maxInputSize

  • If the size of the incoming pack stream is larger than thislimit, then git-receive-pack will error out, instead ofaccepting the pack file. If not set or set to 0, then the sizeis unlimited.

  • receive.denyDeletes

  • If set to true, git-receive-pack will deny a ref update that deletesthe ref. Use this to prevent such a ref deletion via a push.

  • receive.denyDeleteCurrent

  • If set to true, git-receive-pack will deny a ref update thatdeletes the currently checked out branch of a non-bare repository.

  • receive.denyCurrentBranch

  • If set to true or "refuse", git-receive-pack will deny a ref updateto the currently checked out branch of a non-bare repository.Such a push is potentially dangerous because it brings the HEADout of sync with the index and working tree. If set to "warn",print a warning of such a push to stderr, but allow the push toproceed. If set to false or "ignore", allow such pushes with nomessage. Defaults to "refuse".

Another option is "updateInstead" which will update the workingtree if pushing into the current branch. This option isintended for synchronizing working directories when one side is not easilyaccessible via interactive ssh (e.g. a live web site, hence the requirementthat the working directory be clean). This mode also comes in handy whendeveloping inside a VM to test and fix code on different Operating Systems.

By default, "updateInstead" will refuse the push if the working tree orthe index have any difference from the HEAD, but the push-to-checkouthook can be used to customize this. See githooks[5].

  • receive.denyNonFastForwards
  • If set to true, git-receive-pack will deny a ref update which isnot a fast-forward. Use this to prevent such an update via a push,even if that push is forced. This configuration variable isset when initializing a shared repository.

  • receive.hideRefs

  • This variable is the same as transfer.hideRefs, but appliesonly to receive-pack (and so affects pushes, but not fetches).An attempt to update or delete a hidden ref by git push isrejected.

  • receive.updateServerInfo

  • If set to true, git-receive-pack will run git-update-server-infoafter receiving data from git-push and updating refs.

  • receive.shallowUpdate

  • If set to true, .git/shallow can be updated when new refsrequire new shallow roots. Otherwise those refs are rejected.

  • remote.pushDefault

  • The remote to push to by default. Overridesbranch.<name>.remote for all branches, and is overridden bybranch.<name>.pushRemote for specific branches.

  • remote..url

  • The URL of a remote repository. See git-fetch[1] orgit-push[1].

  • remote..pushurl

  • The push URL of a remote repository. See git-push[1].

  • remote..proxy

  • For remotes that require curl (http, https and ftp), the URL tothe proxy to use for that remote. Set to the empty string todisable proxying for that remote.

  • remote..proxyAuthMethod

  • For remotes that require curl (http, https and ftp), the method to use forauthenticating against the proxy in use (probably set inremote.<name>.proxy). See http.proxyAuthMethod.

  • remote..fetch

  • The default set of "refspec" for git-fetch[1]. Seegit-fetch[1].

  • remote..push

  • The default set of "refspec" for git-push[1]. Seegit-push[1].

  • remote..mirror

  • If true, pushing to this remote will automatically behaveas if the —mirror option was given on the command line.

  • remote..skipDefaultUpdate

  • If true, this remote will be skipped by default when updatingusing git-fetch[1] or the update subcommand ofgit-remote[1].

  • remote..skipFetchAll

  • If true, this remote will be skipped by default when updatingusing git-fetch[1] or the update subcommand ofgit-remote[1].

  • remote..receivepack

  • The default program to execute on the remote side when pushing. Seeoption —receive-pack of git-push[1].

  • remote..uploadpack

  • The default program to execute on the remote side when fetching. Seeoption —upload-pack of git-fetch-pack[1].

  • remote..tagOpt

  • Setting this value to —no-tags disables automatic tag following whenfetching from remote . Setting it to —tags will fetch everytag from remote , even if they are not reachable from remotebranch heads. Passing these flags directly to git-fetch[1] canoverride this setting. See options —tags and —no-tags ofgit-fetch[1].

  • remote..vcs

  • Setting this to a value will cause Git to interact withthe remote with the git-remote- helper.

  • remote..prune

  • When set to true, fetching from this remote by default will alsoremove any remote-tracking references that no longer exist on theremote (as if the —prune option was given on the command line).Overrides fetch.prune settings, if any.

  • remote..pruneTags

  • When set to true, fetching from this remote by default will alsoremove any local tags that no longer exist on the remote if pruningis activated in general via remote.<name>.prune, fetch.prune or—prune. Overrides fetch.pruneTags settings, if any.

See also remote.<name>.prune and the PRUNING section ofgit-fetch[1].

  • remotes.
  • The list of remotes which are fetched by "git remote update". See git-remote[1].

  • repack.useDeltaBaseOffset

  • By default, git-repack[1] creates packs that usedelta-base offset. If you need to share your repository withGit older than version 1.4.4, either directly or via a dumbprotocol such as http, then you need to set this option to"false" and repack. Access from old Git versions over thenative protocol are unaffected by this option.

  • repack.packKeptObjects

  • If set to true, makes git repack act as if—pack-kept-objects was passed. See git-repack[1] fordetails. Defaults to false normally, but true if a bitmapindex is being written (either via —write-bitmap-index orrepack.writeBitmaps).

  • repack.useDeltaIslands

  • If set to true, makes git repack act as if —delta-islandswas passed. Defaults to false.

  • repack.writeBitmaps

  • When true, git will write a bitmap index when packing allobjects to disk (e.g., when git repack -a is run). Thisindex can speed up the "counting objects" phase of subsequentpacks created for clones and fetches, at the cost of some diskspace and extra time spent on the initial repack. This hasno effect if multiple packfiles are created.Defaults to true on bare repos, false otherwise.

  • rerere.autoUpdate

  • When set to true, git-rerere updates the index with theresulting contents after it cleanly resolves conflicts usingpreviously recorded resolution. Defaults to false.

  • rerere.enabled

  • Activate recording of resolved conflicts, so that identicalconflict hunks can be resolved automatically, should they beencountered again. By default, git-rerere[1] isenabled if there is an rr-cache directory under the$GIT_DIR, e.g. if "rerere" was previously used in therepository.

  • reset.quiet

  • When set to true, git reset will default to the —quiet option.

  • sendemail.identity

  • A configuration identity. When given, causes values in thesendemail. subsection to take precedence overvalues in the sendemail section. The default identity isthe value of sendemail.identity.

  • sendemail.smtpEncryption

  • See git-send-email[1] for description. Note that thissetting is not subject to the identity mechanism.

  • sendemail.smtpssl (deprecated)

  • Deprecated alias for sendemail.smtpEncryption = ssl.

  • sendemail.smtpsslcertpath

  • Path to ca-certificates (either a directory or a single file).Set it to an empty string to disable certificate verification.

  • sendemail..*

  • Identity-specific versions of the sendemail.* parametersfound below, taking precedence over those when thisidentity is selected, through either the command-line orsendemail.identity.

  • sendemail.aliasesFile

  • sendemail.aliasFileType
  • sendemail.annotate
  • sendemail.bcc
  • sendemail.cc
  • sendemail.ccCmd
  • sendemail.chainReplyTo
  • sendemail.confirm
  • sendemail.envelopeSender
  • sendemail.from
  • sendemail.multiEdit
  • sendemail.signedoffbycc
  • sendemail.smtpPass
  • sendemail.suppresscc
  • sendemail.suppressFrom
  • sendemail.to
  • sendemail.tocmd
  • sendemail.smtpDomain
  • sendemail.smtpServer
  • sendemail.smtpServerPort
  • sendemail.smtpServerOption
  • sendemail.smtpUser
  • sendemail.thread
  • sendemail.transferEncoding
  • sendemail.validate
  • sendemail.xmailer
  • See git-send-email[1] for description.

  • sendemail.signedoffcc (deprecated)

  • Deprecated alias for sendemail.signedoffbycc.

  • sendemail.smtpBatchSize

  • Number of messages to be sent per connection, after that a reloginwill happen. If the value is 0 or undefined, send all messages inone connection.See also the —batch-size option of git-send-email[1].

  • sendemail.smtpReloginDelay

  • Seconds wait before reconnecting to smtp server.See also the —relogin-delay option of git-send-email[1].

  • sequence.editor

  • Text editor used by git rebase -i for editing the rebase instruction file.The value is meant to be interpreted by the shell when it is used.It can be overridden by the GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR environment variable.When not configured the default commit message editor is used instead.

  • showBranch.default

  • The default set of branches for git-show-branch[1].See git-show-branch[1].

  • splitIndex.maxPercentChange

  • When the split index feature is used, this specifies thepercent of entries the split index can contain compared to thetotal number of entries in both the split index and the sharedindex before a new shared index is written.The value should be between 0 and 100. If the value is 0 thena new shared index is always written, if it is 100 a newshared index is never written.By default the value is 20, so a new shared index is writtenif the number of entries in the split index would be greaterthan 20 percent of the total number of entries.See git-update-index[1].

  • splitIndex.sharedIndexExpire

  • When the split index feature is used, shared index files thatwere not modified since the time this variable specifies willbe removed when a new shared index file is created. The value"now" expires all entries immediately, and "never" suppressesexpiration altogether.The default value is "2.weeks.ago".Note that a shared index file is considered modified (for thepurpose of expiration) each time a new split-index file iseither created based on it or read from it.See git-update-index[1].

  • ssh.variant

  • By default, Git determines the command line arguments to usebased on the basename of the configured SSH command (configuredusing the environment variable GIT_SSH or GIT_SSH_COMMAND orthe config setting core.sshCommand). If the basename isunrecognized, Git will attempt to detect support of OpenSSHoptions by first invoking the configured SSH command with the-G (print configuration) option and will subsequently useOpenSSH options (if that is successful) or no options besidesthe host and remote command (if it fails).

The config variable ssh.variant can be set to override this detection.Valid values are ssh (to use OpenSSH options), plink, putty,tortoiseplink, simple (no options except the host and remote command).The default auto-detection can be explicitly requested using the valueauto. Any other value is treated as ssh. This setting can also beoverridden via the environment variable GIT_SSH_VARIANT.

The current command-line parameters used for each variant are asfollows:

  • ssh - [-p port] [-4] [-6] [-o option] [username@]host command

  • simple - [username@]host command

  • plink or putty - [-P port] [-4] [-6] [username@]host command

  • tortoiseplink - [-P port] [-4] [-6] -batch [username@]host command

Except for the simple variant, command-line parameters are likely tochange as git gains new features.

  • status.relativePaths
  • By default, git-status[1] shows paths relative to thecurrent directory. Setting this variable to false shows pathsrelative to the repository root (this was the default for Gitprior to v1.5.4).

  • status.short

  • Set to true to enable —short by default in git-status[1].The option —no-short takes precedence over this variable.

  • status.branch

  • Set to true to enable —branch by default in git-status[1].The option —no-branch takes precedence over this variable.

  • status.aheadBehind

  • Set to true to enable —ahead-behind and false to enable—no-ahead-behind by default in git-status[1] fornon-porcelain status formats. Defaults to true.

  • status.displayCommentPrefix

  • If set to true, git-status[1] will insert a commentprefix before each output line (starting withcore.commentChar, i.e. # by default). This was thebehavior of git-status[1] in Git 1.8.4 and previous.Defaults to false.

  • status.renameLimit

  • The number of files to consider when performing rename detectionin git-status[1] and git-commit[1]. Defaults tothe value of diff.renameLimit.

  • status.renames

  • Whether and how Git detects renames in git-status[1] andgit-commit[1] . If set to "false", rename detection isdisabled. If set to "true", basic rename detection is enabled.If set to "copies" or "copy", Git will detect copies, as well.Defaults to the value of diff.renames.

  • status.showStash

  • If set to true, git-status[1] will display the number ofentries currently stashed away.Defaults to false.

  • status.showUntrackedFiles

  • By default, git-status[1] and git-commit[1] showfiles which are not currently tracked by Git. Directories whichcontain only untracked files, are shown with the directory nameonly. Showing untracked files means that Git needs to lstat() allthe files in the whole repository, which might be slow on somesystems. So, this variable controls how the commands displaysthe untracked files. Possible values are:
  • no - Show no untracked files.

  • normal - Show untracked files and directories.

  • all - Show also individual files in untracked directories.

If this variable is not specified, it defaults to normal.This variable can be overridden with the -u|—untracked-files optionof git-status[1] and git-commit[1].

  • status.submoduleSummary
  • Defaults to false.If this is set to a non zero number or true (identical to -1 or anunlimited number), the submodule summary will be enabled and asummary of commits for modified submodules will be shown (see—summary-limit option of git-submodule[1]). Please notethat the summary output command will be suppressed for allsubmodules when diff.ignoreSubmodules is set to all or onlyfor those submodules where submodule.<name>.ignore=all. The onlyexception to that rule is that status and commit will show stagedsubmodule changes. Toalso view the summary for ignored submodules you can either usethe —ignore-submodules=dirty command-line option or the gitsubmodule summary command, which shows a similar output but doesnot honor these settings.

  • stash.useBuiltin

  • Set to false to use the legacy shell script implementation ofgit-stash[1]. Is true by default, which means usethe built-in rewrite of it in C.

The C rewrite is first included with Git version 2.22 (and Git for Windowsversion 2.19). This option serves as an escape hatch to re-enable thelegacy version in case any bugs are found in the rewrite. This option andthe shell script version of git-stash[1] will be removed in somefuture release.

If you find some reason to set this option to false, other thanone-off testing, you should report the behavior difference as a bug inGit (see https://git-scm.com/community for details).

  • stash.showPatch
  • If this is set to true, the git stash show command without anoption will show the stash entry in patch form. Defaults to false.See description of show command in git-stash[1].

  • stash.showStat

  • If this is set to true, the git stash show command without anoption will show diffstat of the stash entry. Defaults to true.See description of show command in git-stash[1].

  • submodule..url

  • The URL for a submodule. This variable is copied from the .gitmodulesfile to the git config via git submodule init. The user can changethe configured URL before obtaining the submodule via git submoduleupdate. If neither submodule..active or submodule.active areset, the presence of this variable is used as a fallback to indicatewhether the submodule is of interest to git commands.See git-submodule[1] and gitmodules[5] for details.

  • submodule..update

  • The method by which a submodule is updated by git submodule update,which is the only affected command, others such asgit checkout —recurse-submodules are unaffected. It exists forhistorical reasons, when git submodule was the only command tointeract with submodules; settings like submodule.activeand pull.rebase are more specific. It is populated bygit submodule init from the gitmodules[5] file.See description of update command in git-submodule[1].

  • submodule..branch

  • The remote branch name for a submodule, used by git submoduleupdate —remote. Set this option to override the value found inthe .gitmodules file. See git-submodule[1] andgitmodules[5] for details.

  • submodule..fetchRecurseSubmodules

  • This option can be used to control recursive fetching of thissubmodule. It can be overridden by using the —[no-]recurse-submodulescommand-line option to "git fetch" and "git pull".This setting will override that from in the gitmodules[5]file.

  • submodule..ignore

  • Defines under what circumstances "git status" and the diff family showa submodule as modified. When set to "all", it will never be consideredmodified (but it will nonetheless show up in the output of status andcommit when it has been staged), "dirty" will ignore all changesto the submodules work tree andtakes only differences between the HEAD of the submodule and the commitrecorded in the superproject into account. "untracked" will additionallylet submodules with modified tracked files in their work tree show up.Using "none" (the default when this option is not set) also showssubmodules that have untracked files in their work tree as changed.This setting overrides any setting made in .gitmodules for this submodule,both settings can be overridden on the command line by using the"—ignore-submodules" option. The git submodule commands are notaffected by this setting.

  • submodule..active

  • Boolean value indicating if the submodule is of interest to gitcommands. This config option takes precedence over thesubmodule.active config option. See gitsubmodules[7] fordetails.

  • submodule.active

  • A repeated field which contains a pathspec used to match against asubmodule’s path to determine if the submodule is of interest to gitcommands. See gitsubmodules[7] for details.

  • submodule.recurse

  • Specifies if commands recurse into submodules by default. Thisapplies to all commands that have a —recurse-submodules option,except clone.Defaults to false.

  • submodule.fetchJobs

  • Specifies how many submodules are fetched/cloned at the same time.A positive integer allows up to that number of submodules fetchedin parallel. A value of 0 will give some reasonable default.If unset, it defaults to 1.

  • submodule.alternateLocation

  • Specifies how the submodules obtain alternates when submodules arecloned. Possible values are no, superproject.By default no is assumed, which doesn’t add references. When thevalue is set to superproject the submodule to be cloned computesits alternates location relative to the superprojects alternate.

  • submodule.alternateErrorStrategy

  • Specifies how to treat errors with the alternates for a submoduleas computed via submodule.alternateLocation. Possible values areignore, info, die. Default is die.

  • tag.forceSignAnnotated

  • A boolean to specify whether annotated tags created should be GPG signed.If —annotate is specified on the command line, it takesprecedence over this option.

  • tag.sort

  • This variable controls the sort ordering of tags when displayed bygit-tag[1]. Without the "—sort=" option provided, thevalue of this variable will be used as the default.

  • tag.gpgSign

  • A boolean to specify whether all tags should be GPG signed.Use of this option when running in an automated script canresult in a large number of tags being signed. It is thereforeconvenient to use an agent to avoid typing your gpg passphraseseveral times. Note that this option doesn’t affects tag signingbehavior enabled by "-u " or "—local-user=" options.

  • tar.umask

  • This variable can be used to restrict the permission bits oftar archive entries. The default is 0002, which turns off theworld write bit. The special value "user" indicates that thearchiving user’s umask will be used instead. See umask(2) andgit-archive[1].

Trace2 config settings are only read from the system and globalconfig files; repository local and worktree config files and -ccommand line arguments are not respected.

  • trace2.normalTarget
  • This variable controls the normal target destination.It may be overridden by the GIT_TRACE2 environment variable.The following table shows possible values.

  • trace2.perfTarget

  • This variable controls the performance target destination.It may be overridden by the GIT_TRACE2_PERF environment variable.The following table shows possible values.

  • trace2.eventTarget

  • This variable controls the event target destination.It may be overridden by the GIT_TRACE2_EVENT environment variable.The following table shows possible values.
  • 0 or false - Disables the target.

  • 1 or true - Writes to STDERR.

  • [2-9] - Writes to the already opened file descriptor.

  • <absolute-pathname> - Writes to the file in append mode.

  • af_unix:[<socket_type>:]<absolute-pathname> - Write to aUnix DomainSocket (on platforms that support them). Sockettype can be either stream or dgram; if omitted Git willtry both.

  • trace2.normalBrief
  • Boolean. When true time, filename, and line fields areomitted from normal output. May be overridden by theGIT_TRACE2_BRIEF environment variable. Defaults to false.

  • trace2.perfBrief

  • Boolean. When true time, filename, and line fields areomitted from PERF output. May be overridden by theGIT_TRACE2_PERF_BRIEF environment variable. Defaults to false.

  • trace2.eventBrief

  • Boolean. When true time, filename, and line fields areomitted from event output. May be overridden by theGIT_TRACE2_EVENT_BRIEF environment variable. Defaults to false.

  • trace2.eventNesting

  • Integer. Specifies desired depth of nested regions in theevent output. Regions deeper than this value will beomitted. May be overridden by the GIT_TRACE2_EVENT_NESTINGenvironment variable. Defaults to 2.

  • trace2.configParams

  • A comma-separated list of patterns of "important" configsettings that should be recorded in the trace2 output.For example, core.,remote..url would cause the trace2output to contain events listing each configured remote.May be overridden by the GIT_TRACE2_CONFIG_PARAMS environmentvariable. Unset by default.

  • trace2.destinationDebug

  • Boolean. When true Git will print error messages when atrace target destination cannot be opened for writing.By default, these errors are suppressed and tracing issilently disabled. May be overridden by theGIT_TRACE2_DST_DEBUG environment variable.

  • transfer.fsckObjects

  • When fetch.fsckObjects or receive.fsckObjects arenot set, the value of this variable is used instead.Defaults to false.

When set, the fetch or receive will abort in the case of a malformedobject or a link to a nonexistent object. In addition, various otherissues are checked for, including legacy issues (see fsck.<msg-id>),and potential security issues like the existence of a .GIT directoryor a malicious .gitmodules file (see the release notes for v2.2.1and v2.17.1 for details). Other sanity and security checks may beadded in future releases.

On the receiving side, failing fsckObjects will make those objectsunreachable, see "QUARANTINE ENVIRONMENT" ingit-receive-pack[1]. On the fetch side, malformed objects willinstead be left unreferenced in the repository.

Due to the non-quarantine nature of the fetch.fsckObjectsimplementation it cannot be relied upon to leave the object storeclean like receive.fsckObjects can.

As objects are unpacked they’re written to the object store, so therecan be cases where malicious objects get introduced even though the"fetch" failed, only to have a subsequent "fetch" succeed because onlynew incoming objects are checked, not those that have already beenwritten to the object store. That difference in behavior should not berelied upon. In the future, such objects may be quarantined for"fetch" as well.

For now, the paranoid need to find some way to emulate the quarantineenvironment if they’d like the same protection as "push". E.g. in thecase of an internal mirror do the mirroring in two steps, one to fetchthe untrusted objects, and then do a second "push" (which will use thequarantine) to another internal repo, and have internal clientsconsume this pushed-to repository, or embargo internal fetches andonly allow them once a full "fsck" has run (and no new fetches havehappened in the meantime).

  • transfer.hideRefs
  • String(s) receive-pack and upload-pack use to decide whichrefs to omit from their initial advertisements. Use more thanone definition to specify multiple prefix strings. A ref that isunder the hierarchies listed in the value of this variable isexcluded, and is hidden when responding to git push or gitfetch. See receive.hideRefs and uploadpack.hideRefs forprogram-specific versions of this config.

You may also include a ! in front of the ref name to negate the entry,explicitly exposing it, even if an earlier entry marked it as hidden.If you have multiple hideRefs values, later entries override earlier ones(and entries in more-specific config files override less-specific ones).

If a namespace is in use, the namespace prefix is stripped from eachreference before it is matched against transfer.hiderefs patterns.For example, if refs/heads/master is specified in transfer.hideRefs andthe current namespace is foo, then refs/namespaces/foo/refs/heads/masteris omitted from the advertisements but refs/heads/master andrefs/namespaces/bar/refs/heads/master are still advertised as so-called"have" lines. In order to match refs before stripping, add a ^ in front ofthe ref name. If you combine ! and ^, ! must be specified first.

Even if you hide refs, a client may still be able to steal the targetobjects via the techniques described in the "SECURITY" section of thegitnamespaces[7] man page; it’s best to keep private data in aseparate repository.

  • transfer.unpackLimit
  • When fetch.unpackLimit or receive.unpackLimit arenot set, the value of this variable is used instead.The default value is 100.

  • uploadarchive.allowUnreachable

  • If true, allow clients to use git archive —remote to requestany tree, whether reachable from the ref tips or not. See thediscussion in the "SECURITY" section ofgit-upload-archive[1] for more details. Defaults tofalse.

  • uploadpack.hideRefs

  • This variable is the same as transfer.hideRefs, but appliesonly to upload-pack (and so affects only fetches, not pushes).An attempt to fetch a hidden ref by git fetch will fail. Seealso uploadpack.allowTipSHA1InWant.

  • uploadpack.allowTipSHA1InWant

  • When uploadpack.hideRefs is in effect, allow upload-packto accept a fetch request that asks for an object at the tipof a hidden ref (by default, such a request is rejected).See also uploadpack.hideRefs. Even if this is false, a clientmay be able to steal objects via the techniques described in the"SECURITY" section of the gitnamespaces[7] man page; it’sbest to keep private data in a separate repository.

  • uploadpack.allowReachableSHA1InWant

  • Allow upload-pack to accept a fetch request that asks for anobject that is reachable from any ref tip. However, note thatcalculating object reachability is computationally expensive.Defaults to false. Even if this is false, a client may be ableto steal objects via the techniques described in the "SECURITY"section of the gitnamespaces[7] man page; it’s best tokeep private data in a separate repository.

  • uploadpack.allowAnySHA1InWant

  • Allow upload-pack to accept a fetch request that asks for anyobject at all.Defaults to false.

  • uploadpack.keepAlive

  • When upload-pack has started pack-objects, there may be aquiet period while pack-objects prepares the pack. Normallyit would output progress information, but if —quiet was usedfor the fetch, pack-objects will output nothing at all untilthe pack data begins. Some clients and networks may considerthe server to be hung and give up. Setting this option instructsupload-pack to send an empty keepalive packet everyuploadpack.keepAlive seconds. Setting this option to 0disables keepalive packets entirely. The default is 5 seconds.

  • uploadpack.packObjectsHook

  • If this option is set, when upload-pack would rungit pack-objects to create a packfile for a client, it willrun this shell command instead. The pack-objects command andarguments it would have run (including the git pack-objectsat the beginning) are appended to the shell command. The stdinand stdout of the hook are treated as if pack-objects itselfwas run. I.e., upload-pack will feed input intended forpack-objects to the hook, and expects a completed packfile onstdout.

Note that this configuration variable is ignored if it is seen in therepository-level config (this is a safety measure against fetching fromuntrusted repositories).

  • uploadpack.allowFilter
  • If this option is set, upload-pack will support partialclone and partial fetch object filtering.

  • uploadpack.allowRefInWant

  • If this option is set, upload-pack will support the ref-in-wantfeature of the protocol version 2 fetch command. This featureis intended for the benefit of load-balanced servers which maynot have the same view of what OIDs their refs point to due toreplication delay.

  • url..insteadOf

  • Any URL that starts with this value will be rewritten tostart, instead, with . In cases where some site serves alarge number of repositories, and serves them with multipleaccess methods, and some users need to use different accessmethods, this feature allows people to specify any of theequivalent URLs and have Git automatically rewrite the URL tothe best alternative for the particular user, even for anever-before-seen repository on the site. When more than oneinsteadOf strings match a given URL, the longest match is used.

Note that any protocol restrictions will be applied to the rewrittenURL. If the rewrite changes the URL to use a custom protocol or remotehelper, you may need to adjust the protocol.*.allow config to permitthe request. In particular, protocols you expect to use for submodulesmust be set to always rather than the default of user. See thedescription of protocol.allow above.

  • url..pushInsteadOf
  • Any URL that starts with this value will not be pushed to;instead, it will be rewritten to start with , and theresulting URL will be pushed to. In cases where some site servesa large number of repositories, and serves them with multipleaccess methods, some of which do not allow push, this featureallows people to specify a pull-only URL and have Gitautomatically use an appropriate URL to push, even for anever-before-seen repository on the site. When more than onepushInsteadOf strings match a given URL, the longest match isused. If a remote has an explicit pushurl, Git will ignore thissetting for that remote.

  • user.name

  • user.email
  • author.name
  • author.email
  • committer.name
  • committer.email
  • The user.name and user.email variables determine what endsup in the author and committer field of commitobjects.If you need the author or committer to be different, theauthor.name, author.email, committer.name orcommitter.email variables can be set.Also, all of these can be overridden by the GIT_AUTHOR_NAME,GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL, GIT_COMMITTER_NAME,GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL and EMAIL environment variables.See git-commit-tree[1] for more information.

  • user.useConfigOnly

  • Instruct Git to avoid trying to guess defaults for user.emailand user.name, and instead retrieve the values only from theconfiguration. For example, if you have multiple email addressesand would like to use a different one for each repository, thenwith this configuration option set to true in the global configalong with a name, Git will prompt you to set up an email beforemaking new commits in a newly cloned repository.Defaults to false.

  • user.signingKey

  • If git-tag[1] or git-commit[1] is not selecting thekey you want it to automatically when creating a signed tag orcommit, you can override the default selection with this variable.This option is passed unchanged to gpg’s —local-user parameter,so you may specify a key using any method that gpg supports.

  • versionsort.prereleaseSuffix (deprecated)

  • Deprecated alias for versionsort.suffix. Ignored ifversionsort.suffix is set.

  • versionsort.suffix

  • Even when version sort is used in git-tag[1], tagnameswith the same base version but different suffixes are still sortedlexicographically, resulting e.g. in prerelease tags appearingafter the main release (e.g. "1.0-rc1" after "1.0"). Thisvariable can be specified to determine the sorting order of tagswith different suffixes.

By specifying a single suffix in this variable, any tagname containingthat suffix will appear before the corresponding main release. E.g. ifthe variable is set to "-rc", then all "1.0-rcX" tags will appear before"1.0". If specified multiple times, once per suffix, then the order ofsuffixes in the configuration will determine the sorting order of tagnameswith those suffixes. E.g. if "-pre" appears before "-rc" in theconfiguration, then all "1.0-preX" tags will be listed before any"1.0-rcX" tags. The placement of the main release tag relative to tagswith various suffixes can be determined by specifying the empty suffixamong those other suffixes. E.g. if the suffixes "-rc", "", "-ck" and"-bfs" appear in the configuration in this order, then all "v4.8-rcX" tagsare listed first, followed by "v4.8", then "v4.8-ckX" and finally"v4.8-bfsX".

If more than one suffixes match the same tagname, then that tagname willbe sorted according to the suffix which starts at the earliest position inthe tagname. If more than one different matching suffixes start atthat earliest position, then that tagname will be sorted according to thelongest of those suffixes.The sorting order between different suffixes is undefined if they arein multiple config files.

  • web.browser
  • Specify a web browser that may be used by some commands.Currently only git-instaweb[1] and git-help[1]may use it.

  • worktree.guessRemote

  • If no branch is specified and neither -b nor -B nor—detach is used, then git worktree add defaults tocreating a new branch from HEAD. If worktree.guessRemote isset to true, worktree add tries to find a remote-trackingbranch whose name uniquely matches the new branch name. Ifsuch a branch exists, it is checked out and set as "upstream"for the new branch. If no such match can be found, it fallsback to creating a new branch from the current HEAD.

BUGS

When using the deprecated [section.subsection] syntax, changing a valuewill result in adding a multi-line key instead of a change, if the subsectionis given with at least one uppercase character. For example when the configlooks like

  1. [section.subsection]
  2. key = value1

and running git config section.Subsection.key value2 will result in

  1. [section.subsection]
  2. key = value1
  3. key = value2

GIT

Part of the git[1] suite