Where do the settings in my Git configuration come from?

Question

Git checks four places for a configuration file:

1. Your machine's system .gitconfig file.
2. Your user .gitconfig file located at ~/.gitconfig.
3. A second user-specific configuration file located at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config or $HOME/.config/git/config.
4. The local repository's configuration file .git/config.

The settings cascade in the following order, with each file adding or overriding settings defined in the file above it.

1. System configuration.
2. User configuration.
3. Repository-specific configuration.

You can see what each file has defined using the following commands:

# System, applies to entire machine and all users
$ git config --system --list
$ git config --system --edit

# User defined
$ git config --global --list
$ git config --global --edit

You can see what just the repository-specific file has defined by opening up the file .git/config for that repository.

If you're using MSysGit on Windows, you'll probably find your user ~/.gitconfig file where ever %homepath% points to if you use echo %homepath% from a Windows command prompt.

From the documentation for git config:

If not set explicitly with --file, there are four files where git config will search for configuration options:

• $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig

  System-wide configuration file.

• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config

Second user-specific configuration file. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set or empty, $HOME/.config/git/config will be used. Any single-valued variable set in this file will be overwritten by whatever is in ~/.gitconfig. It is a good idea not to create this file if you sometimes use older versions of Git, as support for this file was added fairly recently.

• ~/.gitconfig

User-specific configuration file. Also called "global" configuration file.

• $GIT_DIR/config

  Repository specific configuration file.

If no further options are given, all reading options will read all of these files that are available. If the global or the system-wide configuration file are not available they will be ignored. If the repository configuration file is not available or readable, git config will exit with a non-zero error code. However, in neither case will an error message be issued.

The files are read in the order given above, with last value found taking precedence over values read earlier. When multiple values are taken then all values of a key from all files will be used.

All writing options will per default write to the repository specific configuration file. Note that this also affects options like --replace-all and --unset. git config will only ever change one file at a time.

You can override these rules either by command-line options or by environment variables. The --global and the --system options will limit the file used to the global or system-wide file respectively. The GIT_CONFIG environment variable has a similar effect, but you can specify any filename you want.

You don't have to guess anymore which config has been set to where, with git 2.8! (March 2016)

See commit 70bd879, commit 473166b, commit 7454ee3, commit 7454ee3 (19 Feb 2016), commit 473166b, commit 7454ee3 (19 Feb 2016), commit 7454ee3 (19 Feb 2016), and commit a0578e0 (17 Feb 2016) by Lars Schneider (larsxschneider).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit dd0f567, 26 Feb 2016)}

config: add '--show-origin' option to print the origin of a config value

If config values are queried using 'git config' (e.g. via --get, --get-all, --get-regexp, or --list flag) then it is sometimes hard to find the configuration file where the values were defined.

Teach 'git config' the '--show-origin' option to print the source configuration file for every printed value.

The git config man page will now indicates:

--show-origin:

Augment the output of all queried config options with the origin type (file, standard input, blob, command line) and the actual origin (config file path, ref, or blob id if applicable).

For example:

git config --list --show-origin

That will return:

    file:$HOME/.gitconfig   user.global=true
    file:$HOME/.gitconfig   user.override=global
    file:$HOME/.gitconfig   include.path=$INCLUDE_DIR/absolute.include
    file:$INCLUDE_DIR/absolute.include  user.absolute=include
    file:.git/config    user.local=true
    file:.git/config    user.override=local
    file:.git/config    include.path=../include/relative.include
    file:.git/../include/relative.include   user.relative=include
    command line:   user.cmdline=true

For one setting, as commented by wisbucky:

git config --show-origin --get-all core.autocrlf

    file:"D:\\prgs\\git\\latest\\mingw64/etc/gitconfig"     true
    file:C:/Users/vonc/.gitconfig   false

---

With Git 2.26 (Q1 2020), you can add the --show-scope option:

git config -l --show-origin --show-scope

After having previously installed Git for Windows and subsequently uninstalling it, I found that there is a configuration file installed at C:\Users\All Users\Git\config which is a system level configuration file which persists and will affect any future MinGW32 Git packages (in my case, I was running a portable MinGW32 Git package provided by my company). When I ran

git config --system --edit

it would show me the system configuration file located at mingw32/etc/gitconfig, but it would still load the values from the first location as well. This showed up as a warning that configuration values clashed when trying to use Git LFS.

WARNING: These git config values clash:
  git config "http.sslcainfo" = "C:/Users/foo/AppData/Local/Programs/Git/mingw64/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt"
  git config "http.sslcainfo" = "/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt"

(Note: this may also be a situation where LFS warnings are being too assertive, #861)

You can use --show-origin in order to find out where the configurations come from.

Configuration files priority in Git for Windows:

...

$PROGRAMDATA/Git/config::
(Windows-only) System-wide configuration file shared with other Git implementations. Typically $PROGRAMDATA points to C:\ProgramData.

$(prefix)/etc/gitconfig::
System-wide configuration file. (Windows-only) This file contains only the settings which are specific for this installation of Git for Windows and which should not be shared with other Git implementations like JGit, libgit2. --system will select this file.

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config::
Second user-specific configuration file. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set or empty, $HOME/.config/git/config will be used. Any single-valued variable set in this file will be overwritten by whatever is in ~/.gitconfig. It is a good idea not to create this file if you sometimes use older versions of Git, as support for this file was added fairly recently.

~/.gitconfig::
User-specific configuration file. Also called "global" configuration file.

$GIT_DIR/config::
Repository specific configuration file.

...

The files are read in the order given above, with last value found taking precedence over values read earlier.

...

Source: https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/blob/master@%7B2018-01-07%7D/Documentation/git-config.txt#L231

$PROGRAMDATA is an environment variable. You can get the value of those variables like this:

In Git Bash you need to use echo "$ProgramData". In CMD, you need to use echo %PROGRAMDATA%. Note that Git Bash apparently pretends that environment variables are case sensitive.

What is $(prefix)?

The prefix is the top-level directory into which things get installed. In Git for Windows, that's either <some-path>/mingw64 or <some-path>/mingw32.

In addition of git config -l --show-origin, that I presented here, with git 2.8 (March 2016), you now have, with Git 2.26 (Q1 2020)

git config -l --show-scope

# you can combine both options:
git config -l --show-origin --show-scope

git config learned to show in which "scope", in addition to in which file, each config setting comes from.

See commit 145d59f, commit 9a83d08, commit e37efa4, commit 5c105a8, commit 6766e41, commit 6dc905d, commit a5cb420 (10 Feb 2020), and commit 417be08, commit 3de7ee3, commit 329e6ec (24 Jan 2020) by Matthew Rogers (ROGERSM94).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 5d55554, 17 Feb 2020)}

config: add '--show-scope' to print the scope of a config value

^{Signed-off-by: Matthew Rogers}

When a user queries config values with --show-origin, often it's difficult to determine what the actual "scope" (local, global, etc.) of a given value is based on just the origin file.

Teach 'git config' the '--show-scope' option to print the scope of all displayed config values.

Note that we should never see anything of "submodule" scope as that is only ever used by submodule-config.c when parsing the '.gitmodules' file.

Example:

git config -l --show-scope

global  user.global=true
global  user.override=global
global  include.path=$INCLUDE_DIR/absolute.include
global  user.absolute=include
local   user.local=true
local   user.override=local
local   include.path=../include/relative.include
local   user.relative=include