TIL about git configs

Hear ye hear ye people who write git config user.email <your-email> && git config user.name <your-name> everytime you spin up or clone a repository.

I’m embarrassed to admit I just found out about how easy having a ~/.gitconfig is and how it’ll save me 4 seconds a few times a week. I legitimately had bash aliases for this…

alias gcud='git config user.name "Brian Via" && git config user.email "<my work email>"'
alias gcup='git config user.name "Brian Via" && git config user.email "<my personal dev email>"' # good ol' g-cup

Insert joke about how long to automate vs how much time it saves. But in the era of AI, this stuff is one prompt and one exit of vim from being your reality in under a minute.

Credit to Randall at xkcd.

My new setup to avoid that

Here’s my gitconfig setup below:

~/.gitconfig :

[user]
    name = Brian Via
    email = [email protected]  # default email address for me
[includeIf "gitdir:~/Development/Dfinitiv/"] # my work project subfolder
    path = ~/.gitconfig-work
[includeIf "gitdir:~/Development/Personal/"] # my personal projects subfolder
    path = ~/.gitconfig-personal

~/.gitconfig-work :

[user]
    email = [email protected]

~/.gitconfig-personal:

[user]
    email = [email protected]

11 years into this biz and apparently I’m stupid enough to not know about things like this.

I’m also stupid enough to write a blog post about it. Later nerds.

Helpful Diagram I Found

Who knew about this stuff?!