10+ things I always setup in git when I prepare a new environment

When you buy a car or a bicycle, you first adjust the seat position and saddle height to suit your body size.　It is the same with git configuration.

In this article, I will share the git setup I use all the time.

User name & Mail address

git config --global user.name "<name>" && \
git config --global user.email "<email>"

• Replace <name> with my name and <email> with my mail address.

Alias for existing command

git config --global alias.co checkout
git config --global alias.st status
git config --global alias.br branch

Global ignore setting

git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore_global

• This allows you to put your own specific ignore settings in ~/.gitignore_global in addition to the .gitignore for each project, which will be applied to all git operations across all projects.

Push only the branch you are now working on

git config --global push.default simple

Make --rebase the default behavior during git pull

git config --global pull.rebase true

• This prevents unintentional creation of a merge commit if the branch being pulled has been modified locally.

Make --prune the default behavior during git fetch

git config --global fetch.prune true

• This will remove local branches that were deleted remotely when git fetch or git pull was performed.

Set the width of indentation for tab characters

git config --global core.pager 'less -x4'

• In this example, the pager (less command) option specifies tab indent width as 4

Use nvim as the editor to be used when committing

git config --global core.editor 'nvim'

• I use several different text editors for different purposes, but I prefer to use nvim with git commit.

Do not fast-forward when merging

git config --global --add merge.ff false
git config --global --add pull.ff only

• Fast-forward merging makes it difficult to follow the history of work on a branch. Therefore, avoid unintentional fast-forwards when merging.
• However, fast-forwarding is not a problem for git pull cases in most cases ¹, so we enforce fast-forwarding in the case of pulls.
• See also: gitのmerge --no-ff のススメ - Qiita

Output line numbers in the result of git grep

git config --global grep.lineNumber true

Visualize differences in whitespace (including newline codes)

git config diff.wsErrorHighlight all

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EDIT: 2022-07-31

dotfile

As mentioned in the comments, these are stored in .gitconfig. And I have added these settings to the dotfiles repository.

https://github.com/snaka/my-dotfiles/blob/master/.gitconfig

Thanks to all who commented.

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See also

• Alias to remove deleted branches in a git remote at once

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1. In my experience, this happens when you are temporarily changing code while reviewing a PullRequest created by someone else in your local environment. In that case, fast-forward is better because local changes are gathered at the top of the history, making it easier to work with when you finally undo the changes. ↩

Comments

[Tom Wright]

Great tips. Feels like this could be the start of a script. In fact, I can imagine an open source CLI tool for setting up Git just right on new environments, perhaps using a user-specific config file stored online...

[anasrin]

The essential thing for me was add gpg sign and signing key

[François]

Hey :) Great post, thanks for sharing!

How would you deal with 2 git emails on the same laptop?
one for github (perso) and one for work (pro)

The best would be to default to the email perso (and the associated GPG key), and when working from ~/Projects, always use the work email
Not sure if it is feasible ^^

[Shinji NAKAMATSU]

Perhaps you can.
I wrote an article about it, please check it out.

dev.to/snaka/use-a-different-git-c...

[Talles L]

Nice tips!

However I was surprised to see "Do not fast-forward when merging" with the reason of making it "difficult to follow the history".

My personal experience is the exact opposite, having multiple automatic "Merge branch..." commits makes the commit history incredibly polluted.

[Shinji NAKAMATSU]

I understand your surprise, as I have seen several different organizations managing branches with different policies.

There isn't enough in this comment section to discuss that, so I will post a separate entry after I get more thoughts on it.

[Lars Moelleken]

To setup my environment for Linux or Windows I usually use my dotfiles : github.com/voku/dotfiles/blob/mast...

[Shinji NAKAMATSU]

Thanks for the link to your dotfiles! It is very helpful. 👍

[Lars Moelleken]

Good if you find something useful there. 😊

[Julien Dephix]

Do you always use cli commands or do you sometimes commit/push/pull/delete branches from your IDE?

[Shinji NAKAMATSU]

I use tig and git CLI depends on the situation.

github.com/jonas/tig

I often use tig to see logs and diffs, or commands with a specific commit ID, such as git cherry-pick <commit-id> or git rebase -i <commit-id>.

On the other hand, I use the git CLI for risky commands such as git reset, and for tasks that are faster with shell completion such as git checkout <branch-name>.

[Julien Dephix]

I see. I’ll check tig later out of curiosity!

I prefer using my IDE for most commands (I make sure to know what’s going on behind the scenes though) as I find faster (Ctrl+K to open commit window, type message, Ctrl+Shift+K to commit and push).

[Buddhadeb Chhetri]

Thanks for the tips this is really helpful.

[Dominik Bartsch]

Great tips, thank you!

[Ravavyr]

Neat...I install github desktop and click buttons.

Good article, it has its uses if you must use command line :)

[Shinji NAKAMATSU]

Your dotfile is also helpful. Thanks for sharing ✨