Git
Chapters ▾ 2nd Edition

A3.1 Appendix C: Git Commands - Setup and Config

Throughout the book we have introduced dozens of Git commands and have tried hard to introduce them within something of a narrative, adding more commands to the story slowly. However, this leaves us with examples of usage of the commands somewhat scattered throughout the whole book.

In this appendix, we’ll go through all the Git commands we addressed throughout the book, grouped roughly by what they’re used for. We’ll talk about what each command very generally does and then point out where in the book you can find us having used it.

Setup and Config

There are two commands that are used quite a lot, from the first invocations of Git to common every day tweaking and referencing, the config and help commands.

git config

Git has a default way of doing hundreds of things. For a lot of these things, you can tell Git to default to doing them a different way, or set your preferences. This involves everything from telling Git what your name is to specific terminal color preferences or what editor you use. There are several files this command will read from and write to so you can set values globally or down to specific repositories.

The git config command has been used in nearly every chapter of the book.

In First-Time Git Setup we used it to specify our name, email address and editor preference before we even got started using Git.

In Git Aliases we showed how you could use it to create shorthand commands that expand to long option sequences so you don’t have to type them every time.

In Rebasing we used it to make --rebase the default when you run git pull.

In Credential Storage we used it to set up a default store for your HTTP passwords.

In Keyword Expansion we showed how to set up smudge and clean filters on content coming in and out of Git.

Finally, basically the entirety of Git Configuration is dedicated to the command.

git config core.editor commands

Accompanying the configuration instructions in Your Editor, many editors can be set as follows:

Table 4. Exhaustive list of core.editor configuration commands
Editor Configuration command

Atom

git config --global core.editor "atom --wait"

BBEdit (macOS, with command line tools)

git config --global core.editor "bbedit -w"

Emacs

git config --global core.editor emacs

Gedit (Linux)

git config --global core.editor "gedit --wait --new-window"

Gvim (Windows 64-bit)

git config --global core.editor "'C:\Program Files\Vim\vim72\gvim.exe' --nofork '%*'" (Also see note below)

Helix

git config --global core.editor "hx"

Kate (Linux)

git config --global core.editor "kate --block"

nano

git config --global core.editor "nano -w"

Notepad (Windows 64-bit)

git config core.editor notepad

Notepad++ (Windows 64-bit)

git config --global core.editor "'C:\Program Files\Notepad\notepad.exe' -multiInst -notabbar -nosession -noPlugin" (Also see note below)

Scratch (Linux)

git config --global core.editor "scratch-text-editor"

Sublime Text (macOS)

git config --global core.editor "/Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl --new-window --wait"

Sublime Text (Windows 64-bit)

git config --global core.editor "'C:\Program Files\Sublime Text 3\sublime_text.exe' -w" (Also see note below)

TextEdit (macOS)

git config --global core.editor "open --wait-apps --new -e"

Textmate

git config --global core.editor "mate -w"

Textpad (Windows 64-bit)

git config --global core.editor "'C:\Program Files\TextPad 5\TextPad.exe' -m (Also see note below)

UltraEdit (Windows 64-bit)

git config --global core.editor Uedit32

Vim

git config --global core.editor "vim --nofork"

Visual Studio Code

git config --global core.editor "code --wait"

VSCodium (Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VSCode)

git config --global core.editor "codium --wait"

WordPad

git config --global core.editor '"C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe"'"

Xi

git config --global core.editor "xi --wait"
Note

If you have a 32-bit editor on a Windows 64-bit system, the program will be installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\ rather than C:\Program Files\ as in the table above.

git help

The git help command is used to show you all the documentation shipped with Git about any command. While we’re giving a rough overview of most of the more popular ones in this appendix, for a full listing of all of the possible options and flags for every command, you can always run git help <command>.

We introduced the git help command in Getting Help and showed you how to use it to find more information about the git shell in Setting Up the Server.

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