Where does git config --global get written to

Question

When using git config --global to set things up  to which file will it write   Example   git config --global core editor  blah    I can t find it at these places   C  Program Files Git etc gitconfig  C  myapp  git config   I have not set an ENV   My Git version  1 6 5 1 1367 gcd48     on Windows 7

User · Answer

Uninstall Msysgit and install Cygwin   Git  Then global   gitconfig  will be here  C  cygwin 64  home  userName   gitconfig     Now you don t have to worry about an environment variable which may be used by other programs  For example  my environment variable pointed me to a mapped drive in my work windows domain environment  I dont want my global  gitconfig sitting on my  home  mapped drive  I also don t know what might happen to other applications that might rely on that windows environment variable  Operations division might need that environment variable set to the mapped drive for a reason   Also you don t have to worry about Mysysgit overwriting your  profile  configuration settings if you specify a specific path to global   gitconfig   using this method    In general  save yourself and use cygwin bash shell in windows and be happier

User · Answer

I had also a problem with my global  gitconfig This is for the case someone also has this strange   git said       fatal  unknown error occured while reading the configuration files   Now I fixed it  The problem was a second  gitconfig in this folder      c  Users myUser config git config   I don t know where it came from    But now everything works like a charme again

User · Answer

It might be useful to note  for  nix platforms   some types of global git configuration information are stored in  usr share git-core   such as git autocompletion scripts and the following  default  hooks    applypatch-msg  post-update pre-commit prepare-commit-msg commit-msg pre-applypatch pre-rebase update   Each of these can contain their own set of commands to execute  at the time described by their respective filenames

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I was also looking for the global  gitconfig on my Windows machine and found this neat trick using git   Do a  git config --global -e and then  if you are lucky  you will get a text editor loaded with your global  gitconfig file  Simply lookup the folder from there  or try a save as      et voil     -

User · Answer

When is the global  gitconfig file created   First off  git doesn t automatically create the global config file   gitconfig  during its installation  The file is not created until it is written to for the first time  If you have never set a system variable  it will not be on your file system  I m guessing that might be the source of the problem   One way to ask Git to create it is to request an edit  Doing so will force the file s creation   git config --global --edit  If you monitor the user s home folder when you issue this command  you will see the  gitconfig file magically appear   Where is git configuration stored   Here s a quick rundown of the the name and location of the configuration files associated with the three Git scopes  namely system  global and local    System Git configuration  File named gitconfig located in -git-install-location- ming lt 32  etc  Global Git configuraiton  File named  gitconfig located in the user s home folder  C  Users git user  Local Git configuration  File named config in the  git folder of the local repo   Of course  seeing is believing  so here s an image showing each file and each location  I pulled the image from an article I wrote on the topic    Windows Git configuration file locations  TheServerSide com

User · Answer

gitconfig file location     macOS testing OK   global    global config   cd    gitconfig    view global config   git config --global -l   local    local config   cd  git config    view local config   git config -l         maybe a bonus for you Vim or VSCode for edit git config      open config with Vim    global config   vim    gitconfig    local config   vim  git config     open config with VSCode    global config   code    gitconfig    local config   code  git config

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The paths for msysgit are   Windows XP -C  Documents and Settings  lt user name gt   gitconfig  Windows Vista  C  Users  lt user name gt   gitconfig

User · Answer

On  nixes  it s in    gitconfig  Is there a corresponding file in your home   On Windows you can type in git bash   notepad    gitconfig

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Update 2016  with git 2 8  March 2016   you can simply use  git config --list --show-origin  And with Git 2 26  Q1 2020   you can add a --show-scope option git config --list --show-origin --show-scope  You will see which config is set where  See  quot Where do the settings in my Git configuration come from  quot  As Stevoisiak points out in the comments   it will work with non-standard install locations   i e  Git Portable    like the latest PortableGit-2 14 2-64-bit 7z exe  which can be uncompressed anywhere you want   Original answer  2010  From the docs   --global For writing options  write to global    gitconfig file rather than the repository  git config   Since you re using Git for Windows  it may not be clear what location this corresponds to  But if you look at etc profile  in C  Program Files Git   you ll see  HOME  quot  HOMEDRIVE HOMEPATH quot   Meaning  C  Users MyLogin   on Windows 7  That means the file is in C  Users MyLogin  gitconfig for Git in Windows 7

User · Answer

The global location is derived  on Windows MsysGit  using the HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH environment variables  unless you have defined a HOME environment variable  The is detailed in the  profile  script   In my corporate environment the HOMEDRIVE is H   which is then mapped to a network URL   share    The whole lot is then mapped to be  My Documents   which isn t where others would expect  There may have been some further problems with the drive to URL remapping  I don t even get to adjust the HOMEDRIVE or HOMEPATH variables anyway   In my case I have defined a personal HOME environment variable and pointed it to D  git GitHOME and copied all those GIT files  which are without and extension  to the GitHOME directory for safe keeping   The windows environment variables can be set via the Advanced tab in the My Computer properties dialog

User · Answer

I am running Windows 7 and using git as setup by following the instructions on GitHub  a year or two back   A rather common use-case I would have thought  None of the answers above helped me  and after much frustration I eventually found my  real  gitconfig file in the following directory   C  Users Bill AppData Local GitHub PortableGit 054f2e797ebafd44a30203088cd 3d58663c627ef etc  Obviously substitute your user name and presumably the suffix after PortableGit  is a unique GUID or similar

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I think it is important to post this quote      Git for Windows supports four levels of configuration  At the lowest level is the machine specific configuration settings known as  portable  and lives a   ProgramData  Git config   One priority level us the installation specific configuration settings known as  system   which live at   mingw64 etc gitconfig   Both of these configuration file  generally require elevated privileges to modify       Starting with the use specific values known as  global  configuration  which can be found at   UserProfile  gitconfig   we find the  user editable  configuration files  The highest priority configuration settings are in the  local  configuration  which can usually be found at   git config        It see the recommendation in the blog linked is to modify the  system  or  installation  specific configuration settings  which is fine but users should expect that other installations of Git would not absorb said settings  If you want machine wide settings  use the  portable  configuration file  otherwise choose the  global  or  local  configuration files       Hopefully  people find this information useful    source

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If you are using TortoiseGit on a windows PC you can use   Settings   Git   Config   Edit global  gitconfig   to open the global  gitignore file   But if you use your Windows  7  PC in a domain your profile dir is may be a network share  mounted as a drive   In this case TortoiseGit  at least 1 6 5 0  is pointing you to the wrong dir  on c       See the closed TortoiseGit issue 922 for more information  Or using  HOMEDRIVE  HOMEPATH  to open the dir that contains the  gitignore file

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I had installed my Git in  C  Users  myuserfolder  AppData Local Programs Git

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I am using SmartGit with msysgit on Windows 8 1 and noticed that there can be three different locations for the gitconfig file    USERPROFILE   gitconfig C  Program Files  x86  Git etc gitconfig C  Program Files  x86  SmartGitHg git etc gitconfig   But the one that is used is the one from  USERPROFILE   gitconfig

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I had a similar issue  the problem was that the  gitconfig file was located in  C  Users MyLogin  gitconfig     on Windows 7   In other words  the file was located in C  Users MyLogin  gitconfig  gitconfig  instead of on C  Users MyLogin  gitconfig  which is where Git was looking for the files

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As  MatrixFrog pointed out in their comment  if the goal is to edit the config  you might want to run   git config --global --edit   This command will open the config file  in this case  the --global one  in the editor of choice  and await for the file to be closed  just like during git rebase -i

[git] Where does git config --global get written to?

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