How to Gitconfig

Photo by Roman Synkevych / Unsplash

In the last few days, I have been working on my gitconfig extensively, and I would like to tell you the steps I’ve taken to get my work done.

Setup your initial ~/.gitconfig

First of all i created a clean new ~/.gitconfig so i can start from zero.

git config --global user.name "$USERNAME"
git config --global user.email "$USEREMAIL"

after i did it, i got a .gitconfig looking like:

[user]
	name = $USERNAME
	email = $USEREMAIL

So i got a plain .gitconfig and it’s nice, but when i am working for my company, i need to commit and push with my name and e-mail I use in the company. So let’s take a look at our next step.

Setup Users

So we need more than one git user to get our work done, because we have, for example, a private GitHub account and a company account. In our test scenario, I will make a folder called git in my home directory. And we will configure our git users.

First of all, we have to tell git which userconfig we want to use for which directory.

[user]
    name = $USERNAME
    email = $USEREMAIL
[includeIf "gitdir:~/git/COMPANY1/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig_company1
[includeIf "gitdir:~/git/COMPANY2/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig_company2

So now we are telling git that we want generally use the user $USERNAME, but if we are under the directory ~/git/COMPANY1/ we want to use the user from the gitconfig ~/.gitconfig_company1 and for the directory ~/git/COMPANY2/ we want to use the user from ~/.gitconfig_company2, so we have to generate our userconfigs now.

cat <<EOF > ~/.gitconfig_company1
[user]
	name = $COMPANY1_USERNAME
	email = $COMPANY1_USEREMAIL
EOF

and the second userconfig

cat <<EOF > ~/.gitconfig_company2
[user]
	name = $COMPANY2_USERNAME
	email = $COMPANY2_USEREMAIL
EOF

So we are done for now. We added different Users to different folders in our environment, so if we commit and push something in ~/git/COMPANY1/ we will commit with our user from the ~/.gitconfig_company1.

Global .gitignore

But to make our work easier with git, we can add a global .gitignore to our gitconfig; if we want to generate a new one, we can do it with:

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

now our .gitconfig has changed, there is one more entry now.

[user]
    name = $USERNAME
    email = $USEREMAIL
[includeIf "gitdir:~/git/COMPANY1/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig_company1
[includeIf "gitdir:~/git/COMPANY2/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig_company2
[core]
	excludesfile = ~/.gitignore_global

So for me, the ~/.gitignore_global looks like that:

# Node
npm-debug.log
# Mac
.DS_Store
# Windows
Thumbs.db
# WebStorm
.idea/
# vi
*~
# General
log/
*.log
.*.swp

For most people, that will be enough. But I wanted to sign my work in general, so I looked for how I could realize this.

Auto Sign with different git Users

First of all we need to get a GPG key that matches our verified e-mail address.

gpg --full-generate-key

I recommend generating a key that is 4096 bits long, as well as an expiration date for the key. But remember, if it reaches its expiration date, you have to update your key. After we receive the key, we have to check for the keyid.

> gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG
sec   rsa4096/590E5507213AC509 2020-09-15 [SC]
      E163E5A1D0E6CAD4852F4FCA590E5507213AC509
uid                 [ultimate] testing (Key for Testing) <testing@git.com>
ssb   rsa4096/7AB123B711CBE904 2020-09-15 [E]

Now we can add the ID 590E5507213AC509 to our gitconfig; for our global user, we can do it with our git command.

git config --global user.signingkey 590E5507213AC509

If we want to force gpgsign, we need a key for all three of our generated users. So we are going to add the key, to the other ~/.gitconfig_company$ also.

[user]
    name = $COMPANY1_USERNAME
	email = $COMPANY1_USEREMAIL
    signingkey = 590E5507213AC509

For productive purposes, I recommend generating a GPG-key for each e-mail address.

So we have added our signing keys to all of our Git Users. Now we have to edit the ~/.gitconfig again. Because I am on the mac, I have to make more entries like the credential or the GPG block.

[user]
    name = $USERNAME
    email = $USEREMAIL
[includeIf "gitdir:~/git/COMPANY1/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig_company1
[includeIf "gitdir:~/git/COMPANY2/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig_company2
[gpg]
	program = /usr/local/bin/gpg
[commit]
	gpsign = true
	gpgsign = true
[credential]
	helper = osxkeychain
[core]
	excludesfile = ~/.gitignore_global

What have we done?

We wrote a .gitconfig that allows us to work with multiple .gitusers, we also prepared a global .gitignore that excludes files that we don’t want to push into git by default. And we have global signing of commits enabled.
Now we are ready to work. =)

don’t trust me…

I do not know what I am doing, so I cannot take responsibility for the accuracy of the information provided here