Everything You'll Need to Know About Git

Watch on Frontend Masters

git config

Earlier we went over the basics of git config by setting your user name and email.

git config --add --global user.name "ThePrimeagen"
git config --add --global user.email "the.primeagen@aol.com"

















--add

In the previous section we discussed adding and added user.name and user.email. Remember every key is made up of two distinct parts, section and keyname

git config --add <section>.<keyname> <value>

















Problem

Create and add 3 values with the section fem (frontend masters) but different keynames and we will use this for our platform for exploration.



I'll use:

fem.dev is great
fem.marc is ok
fem.git would

















Solution

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --add fem.dev "is great"
➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --add fem.marc "is ok"
➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --add fem.git "would"

















Listing out values

There are a couple ways you can list out config values.

  • --list: where it will list out the entirety of the config.
  • --get-regexp <regex>: this takes a pattern and looks for all names matching

















Problem

Can you list out all of fem value's with a single command?


















Solution

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --get-regexp fem
fem.dev is great
fem.marc is ok
fem.git would
(END)

To tell you the truth, I personally end up using git config --list | grep <thing> more often though it is not equivalent, it


















Problem

Using what you know currently, can you change one of your values of your config that you have added. Take fem.dev as an example. Can you change that value to is amazing! instead? Verify that you have changed the value with --get-regexp


















Solution

We have only talked about --add and --list. by using --add we would execute the following:

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --add fem.dev "is amazing"

But when we list out the values we see

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --get-regexp fem
fem.dev is great
fem.marc is ok
fem.git would
fem.dev is amazing

















Problem

What has happened here?

This may come as a bit of a surprise but config keys are not unique. You can have the same key more than once.

instead of using --list lets use --get <key> and see what comes out


















Solution

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --get fem.dev
is amazing

Notice that it got the latest value. This seems pretty reasonable default. You can get all of the values of a key by using --get-all


















Unsetting

You can "unset" a value and you can remove an entire section. Lets do both.

--unset: Unsets one key --unset-all: Unsets all matching keys


















Problem

try to remove our duplicate key with --unset. If you don't know how to do this, check out the man page, man git-config and search for unset


















Solution

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --unset fem.dev
warning: fem.dev has multiple values

Notice that we get a warning. Does this mean we have removed one of the key value pairs? Or all of them? Well lets list out what we have

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --get-all fem.dev
is great
is amazing
(END)

That means we did not delete a single key! You cannot unset when there are multiple keys.


















Problem

Repeat above but use --unset-all


















Solution

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --unset-all fem.dev
➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --get fem.dev

















Fun fact

configuration is just a file. that means your local configurations are probably in the .git folder


















Problem

find the git config in the .git folder and cat it out


















Solution

➜  my-first-git-repo git:(master) cat .git/config
[core]
        repositoryformatversion = 0
        filemode = true
        bare = false
        logallrefupdates = true
[fem]
        marc = is ok
        git = would

Sometimes when the magic is gone its almost disappointing...


















Problem

Yeah! We were able to unset all of fem.dev's values! We can unset all fem.* values by using --remove-section. Remember a key is actually two parts. Use --get-regexp to validate you have removed everything



<section>.<key>. So remove the entire fem namespace



If you don't know how to use --remove-section, jump into the main page and use search to find the section


















Solution

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --remove-section fem
➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --get-regexp fem

(END)

We have removed all the fem keys! Lets go!


















Locations

We have briefly touched on location. There are several locations for git configs and they merge together to produce your final config.

The locations are: --system, --global, --local, --worktree and you can provide a file path for the config via --file

When we added our user.name and email, we did it for all of our projects through --global, whereas our fem additions were --local since we didn't specify where to add them to.

You can use --local and --global when using --get, --list, --add, and --unset.


















Problem

Try adding the same key fem.dev to --local and --global locations (one at a time) and see what happens when you execute --list and --get-regexp

add to --global first


















Solution

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --global --add fem.dev "is amazing"
➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --local --add fem.dev "is amazing2"
➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --get-regexp fem
fem.dev is amazing
fem.dev is amazing2
(END)

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --list --local
core.repositoryformatversion=0
core.filemode=true
core.bare=false
core.logallrefupdates=true
fem.dev=is amazing2
(END)

















Problem

But what about --get? Does that choose the "latest" or does it choose differently? Can you suss out the ordering mechanism for what value is retrieved via --get?


















Solution

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --get fem.dev
is amazing2

That grabs the local version, but I also added it second. Lets add another Global property and see if we still grab local first

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --global --add fem.dev "is amazing3"


















➜  my-first-git git:(master) git config --get fem.dev
is amazing2

So that means the following:

  1. grabs from more specific to less specific
  2. gets the latest value from the most specific category


To prove #2

try executing git config --get --global fem.dev. We should get is greatest


















Like all of programming

Git config probably at one point seemed a bit weird and you executed one command that long time ago and you haven't done anything since.



As you can see, config is really simple now that we have taken the time to learn it. As always I encourage you to review the git manual


















Problem

Lets make our default branch from master to trunk. The config setting is init.defaultBranch



Question

should this be a local or global change?


















Solution

git config --global init.defaultBranch trunk

This will change the default setting for all projects going forward. This does not mean that our current git projects have changed. Current projects will have to be rename.


















Lets try it out!

Lets try creating a new git repository. You will want to do this part as we will use this project for the rest of the course.

cd to/where/i/create/projects/at
mkdir hello-git
cd hello-git
git init

Whatever name you have chosen should show up now as the default branch!

➜  hello-git git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/ThePrimeagen/personal/hello-git/.git/
➜  hello-git git:(trunk)