💡 Today I Learned

Git config

Config -- from least specific to most specific, is stored in these locations:

  1. [install Location]/etc/gitconfig -- "system-wide" config (for me it is here: C:\Program Files\Git\etc\gitconfig, ymmv)
  2. ~/.gitconfig -- known as "global" config, actually config for the current user, i.e. $home\.gitconfig (a case of scope-exaggeration)
  3. .git/config -- config for the current repo

Get all config:

git config --list

Get the user name:

git config --get user.name
git config --get user.email

Set the user name:

For the current system (i.e. machine) regardless of who is using the machine:

git config --system user.name "John Doe"

The setting above will be overridden by any of those below:

For the current user (i.e. "global") regardless of which repo we are in.

git config --global user.name "John Doe"

The setting above will be overridden by the one below:

For just the current repo:

git config user.name "John Doe"

For a specific file (I haven't used this one)

git config --file FILE_Name user.name "John Doe"

(Where FILE_Name is the name of the actual file)

Also -- for a given repository, to set the username, you can go into the .git\config file and add the username plus an '@' before the url in the 'remote origin' value, e.g.

Change:

[remote "origin"]
    url = https://github.com/secretGeek/til.git

To:

[remote "origin"]
    url = https://secretGeek@github.com/secretGeek/til.git

I've only tried that for bitbucket and github. It seems to work, in the sense that when I go to push a commit, I no longer need to enter my user name. All of the other techniques worked in the sense that they were stored, but they were not automatically applied when I went to push to a remote location.

To globally assume a username of secretGeek when pushing to github:

git config --global url."https://secretGeek@github.com".insteadOf "https://github.com"

To cache passwords (on windows)

git config --global credential.helper wincred

This stores your credentials in the Windows credential store which has a Control Panel interface where you can delete or edit your stored credentials. (Under Control Panel\User Accounts\Credential Manager)

(from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15381198/remove-credentials-from-git)

And to stop caching password on windows:

git config --system --unset credential.helper

Or on linux:

git config --global credential.helper cache
git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout=3600'