Re: What is XDG_CONFIG_HOME for exactly?

From: Matthieu Moy <matthieu.moy@grenoble-inp.fr>
Date: Mar 16, 2015, 09:31 UTC
Message-ID: <vpqvbi1qodw.fsf@anie.imag.fr>
In-Reply-To: <CAHd499AGHgBECH9t_EtkwLx7VCx3yVnDS27PteF3zF1xSAG8Yg@mail.gmail.com>

Show 6 quoted lines

> On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 6:37 PM, Robert Dailey <rcdailey.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
>> My understanding is that git reads the priority of configuration as follows:
>>
>> 1. <local_repo>/.git/config
>> 2. $HOME/.gitconfig
>> 3. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config

$HOME/.gitconfig is the traditional Unix location for config files. It was the only per-user config files in early versions of Git.

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config is the location following freedesktop's XDG standard. It has several advantages (you can version and/or share individual $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ as a whole directory, while it's much harder to version all ~/.git* files individually for example).

You typically want to use either one or the other.

>> 4. system level git config (not sure exactly where this is; not
>> relevant to me on Windows)

This is relevant if you use a shared machine and your sysadmin wants to have the same configuration for all users.

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Robert Dailey <rcdailey.lists@gmail.com> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> As a follow-up, I tested the following in my .bashrc:
>
>
> # Utilize different GIT settings based on platform
> if [[ $OSTYPE == 'msys' || $OSTYPE == 'cygwin' ]]; then
>     echo 'Using WINDOWS specific git settings'
>     export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=.config-windows

You need an absolute directory here:

export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$HOME/.config-windows

Then, I'd suggest that $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config contains a

[include]
    path = ../../.config-shared/git/config

so that you can factor out common portions of your config file into .config-shared/git/config and keep machine-specific portions in ~/.config-{windows,linux}.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/