HowTo: Set contextual git configurations

Let’s say you already have all the git set up on your workstation done. But by the whims of fate, you are about to contribute to several git projects with a different email address. Since you are unwilling to manually set said override per repository or replace your email address globally, you wonder if we instruct git to use different email addresses depending on the working directory?

The answer is yes, and it already lingers on the official documentation. Still, here you can find a quick guide for it.

Step-by-step guide

For simplicity, we will assume all the projects with different email addresses are under the same directory $HOME/not-batman, and the email address in question is [email protected]

Create a git configuration file, preferably within your $HOME. For example $HOME/not-batman/.gitconfig
Set the alternative email address on the new git configuration file, using the git config command with the -f flag followed by the alternative configuration file path.
Using your preferred editor, add the following includeIf statement (use code snippet below) to your global git configuration.
Done!

# Create git config override file
$ touch $HOME/not-batman/.gitconfig
# Add alternative email to git config override file
$ git config -f $HOME/not-batman/.gitconfig user.email "[email protected]"
# Add contextual (or conditional) configuration to global git config
$ cat << EOF >> $HOME/.gitconfig
[includeIf "gitdir:~/not-batman/"]
  path = ~/not-batman/.gitconfig
EOF

You can query the git configuration values on any git repository within the alternative path to verify it is working correctly.

$ cd $HOME/not-batman/bat-goggles
$ git config --get user.email
[email protected]

Side note

Confession time! I wrote this post primarily for my future self since it is pretty easy to google this, but everybody calls it differently. Let me prove my point with a couple of links, remember we all are talking about the same thing:

Last modified on 2022-01-16