threads / discuss / 38817

What is XDG_CONFIG_HOME for exactly?

Subject: What is XDG_CONFIG_HOME for exactly?

## tl;dr

4 messages between Mar 15, 2015 and Mar 16, 2015.

replies: 3people: 2as markdown or json

Robert Dailey· Mar 15, 2015, 23:37 UTC · lore

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

I have a .gitconfig in Dropbox that I symlink to my home directory on different platforms. Specifically, I share this gitconfig across Cygwin/msys on Windows and Ubuntu.

If I can use XDG_CONFIG_HOME to leverage platform-specific settings, I'd be able to keep platform-agnostic settings in my $HOME/.gitconfig and put platform-specific settings in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config and simply give XDG_CONFIG_HOME a different name on different platforms.

Is this what it was designed for? If not, what would be the best approach for this? I was thinking of contributing a patch that would let you specify the name of your git config in the home directory, but I'm not sure if that is necessary. Something like this:

$HOME/$GIT_CONFIG_FILENAME, where GIT_CONFIG_FILENAME defaults to ".gitconfig" if it is not set or empty.

Robert Dailey· Mar 15, 2015, 23:50 UTC · re: Robert Dailey · lore

Re: What is XDG_CONFIG_HOME for exactly?

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
else
    echo 'Using LINUX specific git settings'
    export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=.config-linux
fi

This seems to work nicely!! I share my $HOME directory (located in dropbox) across all platforms so this helps me keep a consistent environment across all my machines with zero effort.

On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 6:37 PM, Robert Dailey <rcdailey.lists@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 24 quoted lines

> 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
> 4. system level git config (not sure exactly where this is; not
> relevant to me on Windows)
>
> I have a .gitconfig in Dropbox that I symlink to my home directory on
> different platforms. Specifically, I share this gitconfig across
> Cygwin/msys on Windows and Ubuntu.
>
> If I can use XDG_CONFIG_HOME to leverage platform-specific settings,
> I'd be able to keep platform-agnostic settings in my $HOME/.gitconfig
> and put platform-specific settings in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config and
> simply give XDG_CONFIG_HOME a different name on different platforms.
>
> Is this what it was designed for? If not, what would be the best
> approach for this? I was thinking of contributing a patch that would
> let you specify the name of your git config in the home directory, but
> I'm not sure if that is necessary. Something like this:
>
> $HOME/$GIT_CONFIG_FILENAME, where GIT_CONFIG_FILENAME defaults to
> ".gitconfig" if it is not set or empty.

Robert Dailey· Mar 15, 2015, 23:59 UTC · re: Robert Dailey · lore

Re: What is XDG_CONFIG_HOME for exactly?

Sorry for the continuous updates... it seems I spoke too soon. This works until you CD into a repository, then none of the settings are accessible. So yeah, basically I need to make sure I'm using this as intended... I still don't understand the purpose of the XDG thing.

On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 6:50 PM, Robert Dailey <rcdailey.lists@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 42 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
> else
>     echo 'Using LINUX specific git settings'
>     export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=.config-linux
> fi
>
>
> This seems to work nicely!! I share my $HOME directory (located in
> dropbox) across all platforms so this helps me keep a consistent
> environment across all my machines with zero effort.
>
> 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
>> 4. system level git config (not sure exactly where this is; not
>> relevant to me on Windows)
>>
>> I have a .gitconfig in Dropbox that I symlink to my home directory on
>> different platforms. Specifically, I share this gitconfig across
>> Cygwin/msys on Windows and Ubuntu.
>>
>> If I can use XDG_CONFIG_HOME to leverage platform-specific settings,
>> I'd be able to keep platform-agnostic settings in my $HOME/.gitconfig
>> and put platform-specific settings in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config and
>> simply give XDG_CONFIG_HOME a different name on different platforms.
>>
>> Is this what it was designed for? If not, what would be the best
>> approach for this? I was thinking of contributing a patch that would
>> let you specify the name of your git config in the home directory, but
>> I'm not sure if that is necessary. Something like this:
>>
>> $HOME/$GIT_CONFIG_FILENAME, where GIT_CONFIG_FILENAME defaults to
>> ".gitconfig" if it is not set or empty.

Matthieu Moy· Mar 16, 2015, 09:31 UTC · re: Robert Dailey · lore

Re: What is XDG_CONFIG_HOME for exactly?

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.

> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

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/