Configuring Git

I needed to configure Git on a new server recently (no GUI), and couldn’t remember my typical configuration.

Disable Output Color-Coding

Many developers can’t live without color-coded command-line output, but I find at best it’s hard to read and distracting, and at worst absolutely incompressible with high ambient lighting and some screen glare. To disable color-coded command line output from Git:

$ git config --global color.ui false
$ git config --global color.diff false
$ git config --global color.status false
$ git config --global color.branch false
$ git config --global color.interactive false

Ignore File-Mode Changes

Git may report that executable files (e.g. shell scripts) have been modified based on differences in file mode interpretation between Unix and Windows systems. If the mode of a file is set to executable and committed to a Git repository in a Unix environment, and then the repository cloned into a Windows environment, the file will be reported by Git in Windows as having been modified – based on its mode. This is the result of subtle differences between a Unix file system and a Windows file system. Committing the “modified” file in Windows and pushing the repository changes back to the Unix repository will result in the file not being executable in Unix (until its file mode is set back to executable).

If this is an issue for you, set your Windows global Git config (~/.gitconfig) to ignore file mode changes (but first, check that your global configuration will not be overridden by a repository configuration).

Check your global and local configs:

$ git config --global core.filemode
$ cd gitrepo
$ git config core.filemode

Set configuration to ignore file mode changes:

$ git config --global core.filemode false
$ cd gitrepo
$ git config core.filemode false

One Reply to “Configuring Git”

  1. Great tip, thanks!Maybe avoid an acaidentcl push (nah, no idea how that could happen), one could usegit config global url.git://git.gnome.org/.insteadof gnome:this way you get access to the read only versionAlso to my big surprise i found out how good the tab-autocompletition in command line works try it out!

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