Where does git config --global get write to?

Question

When using git config --global to set things up, to which file will it write?

Example:

git config --global core.editor "blah"

I can't find it at these places:

C:\Program Files\Git\etc\gitconfig

C:\myapp\.git\config

I have not set an ENV?

My Git version: 1.6.5.1.1367.gcd48 – on Windows 7

`git config --global --edit` should tell you the exact location no matter what kind of setup you have--just look at what file comes up in your editor. — MatrixFrog, Aug 11 '11 at 17:02
`git config --global --list` was also useful for when it doesn't exist as it gave the location of where git is expecting it to be. — AJP, May 18 '13 at 11:22
@AJP: This is exactly my problem, but how to change where it wants to save/read it from?? — Stijn de Witt, Feb 04 '14 at 13:28
In the case of TortoiseGit, it seems to get it from the Environment variables... See https://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/issues/detail?id=1925 — Stijn de Witt, Feb 04 '14 at 13:47
Related: [Where is git config coming from?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/17756753/456814). — , May 28 '14 at 18:35
On Aptana Studio 3 it is found at the following location: %AptanaStudio3Workspace%\.metadata\.plugins\com.aptana.portablegit.win32\etc\gitconfig — John Sonderson, Sep 24 '14 at 07:13
Just to add to @MatrixFrog's comment, once opening `git config --global --edit` you'll probably end up in vim. From vim to get the full file path you can enter `:echo expand(':%p')` -- http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Get_the_name_of_the_current_file — user420667, Sep 24 '15 at 18:50
Adding to the comment by @user420667, the command is actually `:echo expand('%p')`, i.e. without the colon inside the call to `expand` — Tobbe, Jul 04 '17 at 07:31
git doesn't automatically create the file. The file doesn't exist until git writes to it for the first time. So where is it? The fact is, it might not actually exist. — Cameron McKenzie, Jun 20 '18 at 19:56
As a note, on linux `strace -fefile` in front of a command will show you every path it touches by name. so `strace -fefile git config --global -l`. — jthill, Feb 20 '20 at 04:30

score 1385 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 05 '21 at 17:09

1385

Update 2016: with git 2.8 (March 2016), you can simply use:

git config --list --show-origin

And with Git 2.26 (Q1 2020), you can add a --show-scope option

git config --list --show-origin --show-scope

You will see which config is set where.
See "Where do the settings in my Git configuration come from?"

As Stevoisiak points out in the comments,

it will work with non-standard install locations. (i.e. Git Portable)

(like the latest PortableGit-2.14.2-64-bit.7z.exe, which can be uncompressed anywhere you want)

Original answer (2010)

From the docs:

--global

For writing options: write to global ~/.gitconfig file rather than the repository .git/config.

Since you're using Git for Windows, it may not be clear what location this corresponds to. But if you look at etc/profile (in C:\Program Files\Git), you'll see:

HOME="$HOMEDRIVE$HOMEPATH"

Meaning:

C:\Users\MyLogin

(on Windows 7)

That means the file is in C:\Users\MyLogin\.gitconfig for Git in Windows 7.

edited Jan 05 '21 at 17:09

Stevoisiak

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answered Jan 22 '10 at 05:02

VonC

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I was being really dumb, I didnt add the "--global" flag to the edit command! "git config --global --edit" showed the file with all my config changes, "git config --edit" was the file I kept opening and thinking, where is that editor/compare/etc config item I just set! Many thanks. – Ian Vaughan Jan 23 '10 at 11:36
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Thanks. I've seen other places were it said it's at %USERPROFILE%. On my computer HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH are remapped to a network drive. Searches on my local drive were coming up with nothing. So this helped a lot. – Mike M. Lin Aug 09 '11 at 18:11
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Really useful, I was having the same issue - if you're on a domain with a mapped home drive it will try and create the git config there. This would make a good feature request - use %HOMEDRIVE% or %USERPROFILE% – plasmid87 Apr 18 '12 at 14:32
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Why is this called global, when it is only for one user? Wouldn't (for unix) `/etc/gitconfig` be "global" and `~/.gitconfig` only be "local"..... and I guess `.git/config` "hyper-local" ----- Basically, I find the "global" term for this confusing, and I was wondering if there was a good reason for the nomenclature? – Peter Ajtai Apr 27 '12 at 20:27
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@PeterAjtai "global" because it is for all your repository. As opposed to "local" (only for one repo) or "system" (which is for all repo, for all users) – VonC Apr 27 '12 at 21:28
Modifying $HOME seems to only affect MSysGit when using its "Git Bash" shell. Even though the moved .gitconfig is visible in the shell, my PhpStorm client will prompt for user.name and user.email, then write them to my Users\username\ directory. – nshew13 May 30 '14 at 15:21
@N13 I don't use PhpStorm, but I use msysgit in `cmd` only, not in bash. And setting `HOME` does influence a `git cmd` session as well. – VonC May 30 '14 at 15:23
If your using Cygwin shell's, and Git for Windows, git looks for .gitconfig in ~/ , which is not the same if you use a batch shell. And honestly, I avoid batch shells like a plague – Northstrider Apr 12 '15 at 01:46
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See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/606483/what-is-the-meaning-of-these-windows-enviroment-variables-homedrive-homepath/36392591#36392591 about how `HOME*` variables work in Windows and how to handle problems with them. – ivan_pozdeev Apr 04 '16 at 00:24
I do not see these files in my machine, but I beleive I am looking in the wrong places. I've been using git for windows and TortoiseGit, mostly operating from git bash, without issues for a long time. – Raj Oct 18 '16 at 17:11
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@Raj simply type `git config --list --show-origin`: that will list the actual files used by `git config` on your machine. – VonC Oct 18 '16 at 17:51
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Turns out that the user-specific files like those in a .git repository were on a different drive altogether than my git install due to IT configurations where I am. – Raj Oct 19 '16 at 23:19

score 129 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 12 '13 at 16:15

129

I was also looking for the global .gitconfig on my Windows machine and found this neat trick using git.

Do a: git config --global -e and then, if you are lucky, you will get a text editor loaded with your global .gitconfig file. Simply lookup the folder from there (or try a save as...), et voilà! :-)

edited Jul 12 '13 at 16:15

Alex Feinman

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answered Jul 12 '13 at 15:56

MAD

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Just what i was looking for! the -e command! Because editing a property at a time just isn't my gist. – Patareco Jan 05 '16 at 23:14
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Running this command will also create a `C:\Users\\.gitconfig` if it is missing. – pmbanka May 23 '16 at 12:24
I'm running in a non-windowed mode and cannot find the location anywhere – Triynko Jan 09 '19 at 08:11

score 80 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 18 '16 at 08:01

80

On *nixes, it's in ~/.gitconfig. Is there a corresponding file in your home?

On Windows you can type in git bash

notepad ~/.gitconfig

edited Aug 18 '16 at 08:01

Michael Freidgeim

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answered Jan 22 '10 at 00:38

Ben

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This should be the same on windows. – Felix Kling Jan 22 '10 at 00:56
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If you wanna get to it easily, write an alias :) Here's mine: `alias gitconfig='open -a Sublime\ Text.app ~/.gitconfig'`. Use whatever text-editor you want. – aug Oct 14 '14 at 17:24

hash · Answer 4 · 2013-02-15T19:22:35.543

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The paths for msysgit are:

Windows XP -C:\Documents and Settings\<user_name>\.gitconfig

Windows Vista+ C:\Users\<user_name>\.gitconfig

edited Feb 15 '13 at 19:22

answered Jan 22 '10 at 04:19

hash

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Probably better to describe this as %USERPROFILE% then the answer will work for all Windows versions, past, present, and future. – jarmod May 02 '13 at 18:41
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Except I think it's actually %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% as in other answers, which is equal to %USERPROFILE% in many cases, but some of us have IT configurations pointing it to a mapped drive instead. – ojchase Oct 04 '18 at 22:21

score 34 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 20 '11 at 14:57

34

The global location is derived, on Windows MsysGit, using the HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH environment variables, unless you have defined a HOME environment variable. The is detailed in the 'profile' script.

In my corporate environment the HOMEDRIVE is H:, which is then mapped to a network URL \\share\$. The whole lot is then mapped to be "My Documents", which isn't where others would expect. There may have been some further problems with the drive to URL remapping. I don't even get to adjust the HOMEDRIVE or HOMEPATH variables anyway.

In my case I have defined a personal HOME environment variable and pointed it to D:\git\GitHOME and copied all those GIT files (which are without and extension) to the GitHOME directory for safe keeping.

The windows environment variables can be set via the Advanced tab in the My Computer properties dialog.

answered Apr 20 '11 at 14:57

Philip Oakley

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I was scrolling through the answers about to post on the `HOMEDRIVE` and `HOMEPATH` variables, since they just caught me out while using Bower. It seems a number of utilities on Windows read from `:\User\\.gitconfig, while the Git tool itself saves to `%HOMEPATH%\.gitconfig`. I had to go one step further and copy the updated config file from my `H:` (our network uses the same drive letter for that) to my local user folder, only then did Git use the rules correctly when called by Bower. – Mar 24 '15 at 10:00
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@ZaLiTHkA, In my corporate network the user's Home (H:) drive is them re-mapped back to the C:\User\ location as well, so I'd not noticed that. If you can identify which are the FOSS utilities that make the mistake then that would be useful info for helping getting round to reporting/fixing those tools. If they are internal corporate tools you are on your own ;-) – Philip Oakley Mar 24 '15 at 23:32
Unless it's more complicated than a simple setter line, I'm not seeing HOME defined in the etc\profile script. It does still seem to act as described, but I'm unclear where HOME is being set nowadays. – ojchase Oct 05 '18 at 17:48
@ojchase My part of the answer of where --glob config is written related specifically to Windows. The core Linux git writes to places such as where the XDG thingy directs (i.e. I'm aware that linux writes to other places and has other conventions, and importantly it does have a root directory while Windows has 'Drives' ;-) – Philip Oakley Oct 07 '18 at 11:57
@PhilipOakley I was actually referring to Windows too; sorry I was unclear. Combining your answer and others, I was expecting some sort of `HOME = $HOMEDRIVE$HOMEPATH` (or similar) line in `C:\Program Files\Git\etc\profile` and that line doesn't seem to exist, but probably used to? I haven't been able to figure out exactly what is setting $HOME unless it's set by environment variable which I'd prefer not to do. – ojchase Oct 08 '18 at 21:45

score 12 · Answer 6 · edited Oct 20 '17 at 01:57

If you are using TortoiseGit on a windows PC you can use:

Settings / Git / Config / Edit global .gitconfig

to open the global .gitignore file.

But if you use your Windows (7) PC in a domain your profile dir is may be a network share (mounted as a drive). In this case TortoiseGit (at least:1.6.5.0) is pointing you to the wrong dir (on c:...). See the closed TortoiseGit issue 922 for more information. Or using %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% to open the dir that contains the .gitignore file.

Benny Neugebauer · Answer 7 · 2018-11-29T11:10:06.360

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I am using SmartGit with msysgit on Windows 8.1 and noticed that there can be three different locations for the gitconfig file:

%USERPROFILE%\.gitconfig
C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\etc\gitconfig
C:\Program Files (x86)\SmartGitHg\git\etc\gitconfig

But the one that is used is the one from %USERPROFILE%\.gitconfig.

edited Nov 29 '18 at 11:10

answered Jun 30 '14 at 12:23

Benny Neugebauer

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Cameron McKenzie · Answer 8 · 2018-06-21T11:42:45.727

When is the global .gitconfig file created?

First off, git doesn't automatically create the global config file (.gitconfig) during its installation. The file is not created until it is written to for the first time. If you have never set a system variable, it will not be on your file system. I'm guessing that might be the source of the problem.

One way to ask Git to create it is to request an edit. Doing so will force the file's creation.

git config --global --edit

If you monitor the user's home folder when you issue this command, you will see the .gitconfig file magically appear.

Where is git configuration stored?

Here's a quick rundown of the the name and location of the configuration files associated with the three Git scopes, namely system, global and local:

System Git configuration: File named gitconfig located in -git-install-location-/ming<32>/etc
Global Git configuraiton: File named .gitconfig located in the user's home folder (C:\Users\git user)
Local Git configuration: File named config in the .git folder of the local repo

Of course, seeing is believing, so here's an image showing each file and each location. I pulled the image from an article I wrote on the topic.

Windows Git configuration file locations (TheServerSide.com)

there is a forth place called the portable config : [here](https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/2634/git-integration-global-settings-from-command-line.html) they mention the 4 places ; **Git for Windows supports four levels of configuration. At the lowest level is the machine specific configuration settings known as "portable" and lives a "%ProgramData%\Git\config"** — Badr Elmers, Oct 30 '18 at 21:28
Mind blown! I'm going to update the article with the new information. Cheers! — Cameron McKenzie, Oct 31 '18 at 22:04

score 8 · Answer 9 · answered May 08 '19 at 10:11

8

As @MatrixFrog pointed out in their comment, if the goal is to edit the config, you might want to run:

git config --global --edit

This command will open the config file (in this case, the --global one) in the editor of choice, and await for the file to be closed (just like during git rebase -i).

answered May 08 '19 at 10:11

Dima Parzhitsky

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You can use this to figure out where the global `.gitconfig` is located - as long as your editor tells you what directory the file is located in. You can also use other switches (`--system`, `--local`, etc.) to find and edit other `.gitconfig` locations. P.S. `-e` is the same as `--edit` – LightCC Sep 05 '19 at 19:23
that helped me to find where my compny hold the users configfile – Blood-HaZaRd Sep 02 '20 at 15:30

score 6 · Answer 10 · answered May 06 '13 at 16:43

6

It might be useful to note (for *nix platforms): some types of global git configuration/information are stored in /usr/share/git-core/, such as git autocompletion scripts and the following (default) hooks:

applypatch-msg
post-update
pre-commit
prepare-commit-msg
commit-msg
pre-applypatch
pre-rebase
update

Each of these can contain their own set of commands to execute, at the time described by their respective filenames.

answered May 06 '13 at 16:43

samstav

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Not useful for the OP question. – orbfish Feb 13 '14 at 22:12

score 5 · Answer 11 · edited Jun 07 '16 at 12:31

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I had also a problem with my global .gitconfig This is for the case someone also has this strange

git said:

fatal: unknown error occured while reading the configuration files

Now I fixed it. The problem was a second .gitconfig in this folder:

c:\Users\myUser.config\git\config

I don't know where it came from... But now everything works like a charme again.

edited Jun 07 '16 at 12:31

Machavity

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score 4 · Answer 12 · answered Jun 23 '15 at 22:45

I am running Windows 7 and using git as setup by following the instructions on GitHub (a year or two back). A rather common use-case I would have thought. None of the answers above helped me, and after much frustration I eventually found my 'real' gitconfig file in the following directory;

C:\Users\Bill\AppData\Local\GitHub\PortableGit_054f2e797ebafd44a30203088cd 3d58663c627ef\etc

Obviously substitute your user name and presumably the suffix after PortableGit_ is a unique GUID or similar.

This is only the case when using GitHub for Windows. – Snake Jul 18 '17 at 20:05 — Snake, Jul 18 '17 at 20:05

score 3 · Answer 13 · answered Oct 30 '18 at 21:34

I think it is important to post this quote:

Git for Windows supports four levels of configuration. At the lowest level is the machine specific configuration settings known as "portable" and lives a "%ProgramData%\Git\config". One priority level us the installation specific configuration settings known as "system", which live at "\mingw64\etc\gitconfig". Both of these configuration file, generally require elevated privileges to modify.

Starting with the use specific values known as "global" configuration, which can be found at "%UserProfile%.gitconfig", we find the "user editable" configuration files. The highest priority configuration settings are in the "local" configuration, which can usually be found at ".git\config".

It see the recommendation in the blog linked is to modify the "system" or "installation" specific configuration settings, which is fine but users should expect that other installations of Git would not absorb said settings. If you want machine wide settings, use the "portable" configuration file, otherwise choose the "global" or "local" configuration files.

Hopefully, people find this information useful.

source

xgqfrms · Answer 14 · 2020-02-20T03:03:23.067

`.gitconfig` file location

macOS testing OK

global

# global config
$ cd ~/.gitconfig

# view global config
$ git config --global -l

local

# local config
$ cd .git/config

# view local config
$ git config -l

maybe a bonus for you：Vim or VSCode for edit git config


# open config with Vim

# global config
$ vim ~/.gitconfig

# local config
$ vim .git/config


# open config with VSCode

# global config
$ code ~/.gitconfig

# local config
$ code .git/config

Northstrider · Answer 15 · 2015-10-06T23:59:26.897

Uninstall Msysgit and install Cygwin + Git. Then global '.gitconfig' will be here: C:\cygwin(64)\home\[userName]\.gitconfig .

Now you don't have to worry about an environment variable which may be used by other programs. For example, my environment variable pointed me to a mapped drive in my work windows domain environment. I dont want my global .gitconfig sitting on my "home" mapped drive. I also don't know what might happen to other applications that might rely on that windows environment variable. Operations division might need that environment variable set to the mapped drive for a reason.

Also you don't have to worry about Mysysgit overwriting your 'profile' configuration settings if you specify a specific path to global '.gitconfig', using this method.

In general, save yourself and use cygwin bash shell in windows and be happier

score 1 · Answer 16 · answered Apr 15 '16 at 21:40

I had a similar issue; the problem was that the .gitconfig file was located in

C:\Users\MyLogin\.gitconfig\

(on Windows 7)

In other words, the file was located in C:\Users\MyLogin\.gitconfig\.gitconfig, instead of on C:\Users\MyLogin\.gitconfig (which is where Git was looking for the files).

score 0 · Answer 17 · edited Jul 18 '19 at 07:27

0

I had installed my Git in: C:\Users\_myuserfolder_\AppData\Local\Programs\Git

edited Jul 18 '19 at 07:27

AS Mackay

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answered Jul 18 '19 at 07:06

KikeSP

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Where does git config --global get write to?

17 Answers17

--global

`.gitconfig` file location

global

local

Linked

Related

Where does git config --global get write to?

17 Answers17

--global

.gitconfig file location

global

local

Linked

Related

`.gitconfig` file location