Git client setup

These are some settings and configuration I've found useful so far while working with Git.

Git global configuration

git config --global user.name "Marcus Christie"
git config --global user.email marc.christie@gmail.com

Can also set an editor to use for commit messages

git config --global core.editor gvim

Or with MacVim on OS X

git config --global core.editor 'mvim -f'

However, I think I prefer to edit commit messages in the terminal.

You can also use gvimdiff as a merge tool, but I haven't tried this yet.

Excludes file

Set up a global excludes file in ~/.config/git/ignore. My entries so far:

*.swp
.DS_Store
Session.vim

Whitespace

On Windows you want

git config --global core.autoclrf true

I think this is the default on Windows also, so this may be unnecessary.

Credential helper

This tip is mainly for when you are working with a repo over HTTPS, for example, with GitHub, and you authenticate with a username and password. You don't want to have to type passwords over and over. For this you can specify a credential helper that will securely store your password. On OS X:

git config --global credential.helper osxkeychain

On Windows, download git-credential-store. Then start up Git Bash, go to the directory where you downloaded the executable and then run it from the command line

$ git-credential-winstore.exe

Aliases

Shortcuts so you can run git ci -m "fixed bug" instead of typing out commit

git config --global alias.ci commit
git config --global alias.st status
git config --global alias.co checkout

Bash completions

On Windows, Git Bash comes with these already configured. On OS X, I downloaded git-completion.bash, dropped it in ~/bin and in .bash_profile I have

## Git completions
source ~/bin/git-completion.bash

Web viewer

On OS X:

git config --global instaweb.httpd webrick

Now you can start up a web viewer with

git instaweb

As a Mercurial refugee, I got used to hg serve so I like to have a web view.

Haven't tried doing this on Windows yet.

push.default

Set push.default to simple:

git config --global push.default simple

This setting affects what happens when you do a git push without specifing a remote or branch to push. With simple git will push the current branch to the upstream tracked branch. This mode also is the new default in Git 2.0.

Make sure that when you first push a branch to a remote server that you also set it as the upstream tracked branch. You can do that with the -u option:

git push -u origin mybranch

From then on every push can be done simply with

git push

merge.defaultToUpstream

Set merge.defaultToUpstream to true

git config --global merge.defaultToUpstream true

This setting affects what happens when you do a git merge without specifying a branch to merge from. With this set to true, git will merge in changes from the upstream remote tracking branch, which is generally what you want.

Anything else?

Are there any other things you do to configure Git on a new machine? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.