Dynamic git config user.name - depend on hostname

Question

I use git from two computers.

I would like to:

• Use the same ~/.gitconfig file on the two computers.
• Have different user.name on commits from one computer or the other.

In short, I'd like to be able to have something like user.name = "Mic - #{Hostname}", with Hostname being dynamically read.

Is there a way to achieve this?

The only other way I see would be to manually change the user.name on each git repo I use on those 2 computers - but I don't find it clean.

---

Solution for those in this situation: There seems to be no built-in solution as git does not auto-expand config parameters. So, following the advice below, I just issue the following command in my deploying script after importing a new (shared) ~/.gitconfig:

git config --global user.name "Mic [`hostname`]"

That way, git name is always updated.

Depending on your config, you can also put that in your ~/.bashrc or whatever ~/bash_profile you use - although it looks a bit overkill.

Answer 1

Do not store name in ~/.gitconfig but in your ~/.bash_profile set environment variables:

GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="Mic - $HOSTNAME"
GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="$GIT_AUTHOR_NAME"
export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME GIT_COMMITTER_NAME