custom gitconfig for the session-CodePudding

I want to load a specific .gitconfig only for the current session. I tried

git config -f ~/path/to/my/.gitconfig

but it only answers by the man page:

usage: git config [<options>]

Config file location
    --global              use global config file
    --system              use system config file
    --local               use repository config file
etc.

I also tried

GIT_CONFIG=/path/to/my/.gitconfig

but it is not taken into account.

EDIT: In this question, "current session" means "current bash session".

CodePudding user response：

Starting from git version 2.32.0, you can set the environment variable GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL in order to redirect to a different file than ~/.gitconfig. This version also introduces the variable GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM, which would override /etc/gitconfig.

With git versions before, you can kind of simulate the same behavior, by unsetting $HOME, and set $XDG_CONFIG_HOME to a directory which contains a git folder with a config file residing in it. But I would advice against touching $HOME, since this will also affecting any program git runs itself. Also the git developers made it extremely hard to skip any $HOME/.gitconfig file, so there is not really much you could do if your are stuck with an older version.

~/.gitconfig

[alias]
foo = !foo

different-config

[alias]
foo = !bar

In an interactive session you can see the difference:

$ git help foo
'foo' is aliased to '!foo'

$ GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL=/path/to/different-config git help foo
'foo' is aliased to '!bar'

So I would suggest to set GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL to the desired file, which then will get read instead of ~/.gitconfig. Note that a .git/config will still be read, and everything in .git/config will take precedence over the GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL file.

CodePudding user response：

git config without any action just prints the help page you see. Do something with the config file, for example

git config -f ~/path/to/my/.gitconfig --list

Try export GIT_CONFIG to use the environment variables in subprocesses. Not exported environment variables are available only to the current shell but not in subprocesses.