Better configuration/settings for setting git user settings for Work or Personal

[PureKrome]

👋🏻 G'Day all,

Problem

I have different username/email settings for WORK or PERSONAL projects.

I usually put all personal git repo's under a single folder called Personal.
The same goes for work projects, under a Work folder.

I'm finding the current way to configure your git user settings isn't easy and more importantly, doesn't seem to be 100% accurate all the time (aka. buggy?)

I'm hoping this could be a discussion to:

• see if people agree with my assertion
• see if a new proposal can be achieved? or if not (x-plat considerations, etc) at least maybe make it less buggy? Or even, prove that it's a bit buggy?

Currently, I've documented how I do this on Windows.

TL;DR: is that the global user settings need to include an ugly (well, ugly to me) includeIf hack. And what makes it ever worse, is that the syntax for the hack I feel is also a bit tough (yeah, I agree that's just an opinion and not factual) and DEFINATELY easy to be error prone, like my first initial attempts...

Here's a quick summary of what I need to do:

.gitconfig in my Home directory (so on my Windows11 machine: C:\Users\purek)

[user]
	email = [email protected]
	name = Global common name

[includeIf "gitdir/i:c:/projects/work/"]
path = c:/projects/work/.gitconfig

[includeIf "gitdir/i:c:/projects/personal/"]
path = c:/projects/personal/.gitconfig

☝🏻 Urgh at the lack of spaces required in the syntax -and- the linux specific path syntax, even when on windows.

C:\Projects\Work\.gitconfig

[user]
    name = Work Name
    email = [email protected]

C:\Projects\Personal\.gitconfig

[user]
    name = Personal alias/Name
    email = [email protected]

(or we could omit the custom personal section, which just falls back to the default settings in the home directory).

Suggestion

Ditch the includeIf in the "home" .gitconfig. If there's a .gitConfig in any folder, any repo's under that "inherit" those settings.

This is exactly what NuGet does with their nuget.config settings. If you put a nuget.config file in C:\Projects\Work then any child/sub folders here, will also inherit those settings. These same child/sub folder do NOT need their own nuget.config file -> it's 🪄 magically inherited! But, if any of these child/sub folders do have their own nuget.config files, then they will take preferences over what was inherited and merge any settings, with the lowest hierarchy taking preference.

Office NuGet doc reference:

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/consume-packages/configuring-nuget-behavior?source=recommendations#how-settings-are-applied

This is really simple and easy. Win .. Win!

Current way is Buggy?

I think the current logic is causing some unintentional bug? When I look at my git history for whatever repo in my C:\Projects\Work folder, I sometimes see the correct settings (i.e. my Work name and email). But then i also see a scattering of other commits which have the correct email but the incorrect name! It's like it's my default system wide name. I also very rarely do commits via the GitHub UI .. so I'm very confident it's not via that. Also, this is all on one machine and no one else is committing with my name/credentials/etc. Hell no!

---

Is there anyone else using git, like this? Are you finding this is not working (that easily/nicely) for you, too?

Final note: I'm not sure where the best place to have this discussion, so I hope this is ok/the right spot.

[PhilipOakley]

A drive by comment.

Could you say which terminal/shell you are using? It maybe that the quoting requirements vary between shells/terminals, and those quoting methods you are expecting. The quoting problem keeps coming up in a number of threads, so I thought it worth getting those details, along with asking that you also complete as much of the issue template as possible as they do provide extra insight into your setup.

If you can do an MVCE as well, then that would be useful.

[PureKrome]

Could you say which terminal/shell you are using?

Um, I'm not to sure. Because, I feel like this occurs in multiple places/programs. I did mentioned in the OP that this is on Windows11.

I use the normal Windows Terminal to run git commands but I also use the Developer Powershell terminal inside of Visual Studio:

Finally, I also run git commands (like commit and push) from inside Visual Studio .. so i'm not sure if that uses a shell also?

complete as much of the issue template as possible

Ah, I didn't create an issue because I wasn't sure if this problem I'm having is legit and other people agree. So I haven't looked at what the issue template is. I'll check it out now:

---

Setup

Which version of Git for Windows are you using? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

64bit

$ git --version --build-options

git version 2.33.0.windows.2
cpu: x86_64
built from commit: 8735530946cced809cc6cc4c2ca3b078cdb3dfc8
sizeof-long: 4
sizeof-size_t: 8
shell-path: /bin/sh
feature: fsmonitor--daemon

Which version of Windows are you running? Vista, 7, 8, 10? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

Edition Windows 11 Pro
Version 22H2
Installed on ‎1/‎10/‎2022
OS build 22621.608
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22634.1000.0

$ cmd.exe /c ver

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22621.608]

What options did you set as part of the installation? Or did you choose the defaults?

I can't remember. Usually defaults.

# One of the following:
> type "C:\Program Files\Git\etc\install-options.txt"

Editor Option: VIM
Custom Editor Path:
Default Branch Option:
Path Option: Cmd
SSH Option: OpenSSH
Tortoise Option: false
CURL Option: OpenSSL
CRLF Option: CRLFAlways
Bash Terminal Option: MinTTY
Git Pull Behavior Option: Merge
Use Credential Manager: Core
Performance Tweaks FSCache: Enabled
Enable Symlinks: Disabled
Enable Pseudo Console Support: Disabled
Enable FSMonitor: Disabled

Details

Which terminal/shell are you running Git from? e.g Bash/CMD/PowerShell/other

Not too sure. I run commands in the Windows Terminal (which defaults to Powershell), in the Visual Studio Developer Powershell and using the VS Git client.

What commands did you run to trigger this issue? If you can provide a
Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example
this will help us understand the issue.

I'm not sure -exactly- which command is causing this. I'm guessing it's the commit command because that would record my name and email.

What did you expect to occur after running these commands?

The "inherited" [user] section data. Not the default custom-settings. At least, not the default name.

What actually happened instead?

History is showing a mix of name values for the commit author. some are from this inherited parent folder (which is good), other's showing my default.

If the problem was occurring with a specific repository, can you provide the URL to that repository to help us with testing?

Nope. Any of my private work ones.

---

Final thoughts: I also do SQUASH AND MERGE in GitHub ... so I'm not sure if this might be doing it? Not sure how to confirm if this is a git issue. That said, the main idea of this discussion isn't necessarily about a potential bug, but more about how to make setting custom [user] sections way more nicely ... like how the NuGet team do for their custom settings.