Git config: list only the effective values

Question

Some git config values are configured at the system, some at the user level and some in the repository. When invoking

$ git config --list

I'm getting a list of all definitions in all files. Overridden values will occur duplicated. How to get a list of the repository's effective values (I don't care about where they are configured)?

Answer 1

The tricky part is this:

Overridden values will occur duplicated.

It's true that some items, e.g., user.name and user.email, will have a more-local value override a more-global value. For other items, though, all the settings apply. This is true for remote.*.fetch values, for instance.

The actual treatment of any one item depends on the program that examines the setting. The git config command does not know how a git xyzzy command—which is not yet written (it's something you will write some time in the future)—intends to use all the xyzzy.* settings. So it just shows all of them. Use --show-origin to show which particular configuration file was the source of any one particular setting.

If you're interested in one particular value, use git config --get:

git config --get core.editor

or:

git config --get-all remote.origin.fetch

The --get variant shows the last setting, i.e., the most-local one, while the --get-all variant shows all the settings. Which one to use depends, of course, on how the program you will run—which might be one already written, or might be one you're in the process of writing now or will write next year—actually uses that variable.

One could argue that git config should understand all the "well known" variable names (core.editor vs remote.*.fetch for instance) and default to showing them appropriately under --list. The Git authors tend to treat Git as a tool-set rather than a solution, though, so they are not very receptive to this line of argument.

You can write this smarter version of git config --list yourself. Perhaps you can call it git xyzzy. :-) OK, maybe git smart-config-list. Your smarter listing command will run git config --show-origins --list, then apply the "all or last" filtering rule based on its knowledge about all those variable names. As you write this command, think about Git's "tools vs solutions" philosophy, and that git config is not that well designed since it acts as both plumbing (internal-usage tool) and porcelain (an end-user-facing command).

Answer 2

Make a bash function:

function foo(){
    para=$@
    for key in `git config --list ${para}| awk -F= '{print $1}' | sort -u`;do
        echo $key=`git config ${para} --get $key`
    done
}

foo to get a list of the repository's effective values. foo --global, foo --local, foo --system, foo -f somefile or foo --blob someblob are also supported.