Re: git-config: replaces ~/.gitconfig symlink with real file

From: Bradford Smith <bradford.carl.smith@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 16, 2007, 11:33 UTC
Message-ID: <f158199e0707160433v27fe7073w9c550712c41c32e8@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <dbfc82860707160237v6772b5b8o541f2045ccd824d5@mail.gmail.com>

On 7/16/07, Nikolai Weibull <now@bitwi.se> wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> On 7/15/07, Bradford Smith <bradford.carl.smith@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Since the number of dot-files and dot-directories that I have in my
> > home directory these days is somewhat overwhelming, I like to keep
> > those I directly edit all together in an ~/etc directory so I can
> > easily back them up and/or copy them in bulk to new accounts.  So,
> > several of my home dot-files are just symlinks to something in ~/etc,
> > including ~/.gitconfig.
>
> How about adding an environment variable telling Git where to find
> user-global .gitconfig instead?
> > home directory these days is somewhat overwhelming, I like to keep
> > those I directly edit all together in an ~/etc directory so I can
> > easily back them up and/or copy them in bulk to new accounts.  So,
> > several of my home dot-files are just symlinks to something in ~/etc,
> > including ~/.gitconfig.
>
> How about adding an environment variable telling Git where to find
> user-global .gitconfig instead?

Thanks for suggesting that.

Actually, by looking at the code I discovered I could use the environment variable GIT_CONFIG to specify where the configuration file is, and I have already changed my setup to use this. Unfortunately, I found the documentation for this variable in git-config(1) confusing or I would have used it before. If I get the chance, I'll submit a patch for git-config.txt, and maybe for git.txt as well, since it lists lots of other environment variables but not GIT_CONFIG or GIT_CONFIG_LOCAL.

Thanks,

Bradford