System level git config in mac

Question

I am able to see global and local config files at usual locations.

But if i type

git config --system --list

it gives me

fatal: unable to read config file '/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/etc/gitconfig': No such file or directory

• Any idea why it is looking there?
• And why it is not set? Where is
• system git config location for Mac?

There is no file at /etc/gitconfig or $HOME/.config/git (prescribed location got *nix and osx respectively)

EDIT

doing

sudo git config --system --list

does not help

Answer 1

@Abhijit Mazumder:

I know this is an old question, but I had a similar issue when attempting to set a system level git config value on my mac and thought I would post my solution here in case it could help you.

NOTE: I strongly suspect that if you simply create the '/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/etc/' directory and create a file called gitconfig within that directory, then your attempts at viewing or setting system level git config values will be successful.

My first attempt at setting a system level git config value on my mac was:

git config --system alias.cl clone

This resulted in an error:

error: could not lock config file /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/etc/gitconfig: No such file or directory

I thought perhaps I needed to add 'sudo' to the command:

sudo git config --system alias.cl clone

But running the command with 'sudo' gave me the same error:

error: could not lock config file /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/etc/gitconfig: No such file or directory

So, from the root directory on my mac, I switched into the 'usr' directory mentioned in the error, just to see what was in there:

cd Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/

I was surprised to find that there was no 'etc' directory. The only directories I saw were 'bin', 'lib', 'libexec', and 'share'.

So I decided to create what was missing. I first created an 'etc' directory:

sudo mkdir etc

And then created a gitconfig file in the 'etc' directory:

sudo touch etc/gitconfig

I was then able to set a system level git config value with the following command:

sudo git config --system alias.cl clone

In order to confirm that the system level git config value had actually been set, I viewed the contents of the gitconfig file.

I first used the unix 'cat' command while inside my 'usr' directory:

cat etc/gitconfig

The output from the 'cat' command was:

[alias]
    cl = clone

Then I used a git command (the same one you were trying to use in your question) to check that my system level git config value had been set:

git config --system --list

The output from this command was:

alias.cl=clone

The last thing I needed to do to ensure that I had placed my file in the proper location was try the alias I had created, so I tried running:

git cl

Running this command using the alias I created resulted in the following output, which confirmed for me that everything was working properly:

You must specify a repository to clone.

usage: git clone [<options>] [--] <repo> [<dir>]

    -v, --verbose         be more verbose
    -q, --quiet           be more quiet
    --progress            force progress reporting
    -n, --no-checkout     don't create a checkout
    --bare                create a bare repository
    --mirror              create a mirror repository (implies bare)
    -l, --local           to clone from a local repository
    --no-hardlinks        don't use local hardlinks, always copy
    -s, --shared          setup as shared repository
    --recursive           initialize submodules in the clone
    --recurse-submodules  initialize submodules in the clone
    --template <template-directory>
                          directory from which templates will be used
    --reference <repo>    reference repository
    --dissociate          use --reference only while cloning
    -o, --origin <name>   use <name> instead of 'origin' to track upstream
    -b, --branch <branch>
                          checkout <branch> instead of the remote's HEAD
    -u, --upload-pack <path>
                          path to git-upload-pack on the remote
    --depth <depth>       create a shallow clone of that depth
    --single-branch       clone only one branch, HEAD or --branch
    --separate-git-dir <gitdir>
                          separate git dir from working tree
    -c, --config <key=value>
                          set config inside the new repository