Set git author identity (user.name and user.email) globally and/or for a single repository, and verify what is currently configured
domain: git-scm.com/docs/git-config · 7 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Set global identity (applies to all repos for this user): git config --global user.name "Your Name" and git config --global user.email "you@example.com". This is the classic invocation form, git config <name> <value>, combined with the --global scope flag; it writes to ~/.gitconfig (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config if that file exists and ~/.gitconfig does not).
The current docs mark the classic 'git config <name> <value>' form as deprecated in favor of an explicit subcommand. The equivalent modern form is: git config set --global user.name "Your Name" and git config set --global user.email "you@example.com".
Set a per-repository override: run the same commands without --global from inside the repo (writes to the repository-local .git/config, which is the default write location): git config user.name "Repo-Specific Name" (deprecated form) or git config set user.name "Repo-Specific Name" (modern form) — same for user.email.
Local (repo) values take precedence over global values because git reads system, then global, then repository-local config in order, with later files overriding earlier ones for single-valued keys.
Check a single value with the modern get subcommand: git config get user.name and git config get user.email. The deprecated equivalent is git config --get user.name.
List everything currently in effect (merged from all scopes, in file order) with: git config list. Deprecated equivalents are git config -l and git config --list.
To see exactly which file/scope a value came from, add the origin/scope flags: git config list --show-origin --show-scope, or restrict the read to one scope, e.g. git config --local get user.name to check only the repo-local file.
Known gotchas
The docs explicitly list 'git config <name> <value>' (with or without --global) as a DEPRECATED MODE, replaced by 'git config set <name> <value>'; likewise bare 'git config <name>' is replaced by 'git config get <name>', and '-l/--list' by 'git config list'. Both classic and modern forms are documented and currently work, but new scripts should prefer the subcommand form.
Forgetting to set identity at all causes commits to fail (or, on older/misconfigured setups, to silently use a bootstrapped placeholder identity) — always verify with 'git config get user.name' and 'git config get user.email' before committing in a fresh environment.
--global writes to the global file for writes but for reads with --global it reads only the global file (not merged with local) — do not confuse 'git config --global get X' (global file only) with the unscoped 'git config get X' (merged, local wins).
git config set refuses to write to a key that already has multiple values (multi-valued/multivar) unless you pass --all (replace every line) or --value=<pattern> (replace only matching lines); otherwise it errors out rather than guessing which line to change.
Exit codes matter for scripting: git config returns 1 for invalid section/key, 2 for missing section/name, 3 for invalid config file, 4 if the file can't be written, 5 for unset/set on a key with multiple matching lines (or unsetting a key that doesn't exist), 6 for an invalid regexp, and 0 on success — check these when automating identity setup.
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