If like me, you need to make Git commits from multiple email addresses on the same machine (say, from your personal and your work address), here’s a handy trick that will help make sure you make every commit with the right address.
Start by creating a directory for each profile, named after the
profile. In my case, I have D:/git/home and
D:/git/work. Move all your Git repositories into
the directory corresponding to the profile that you want to use when
making commits to that repository. At the root of your profile
directories, create a .gitconfig file with the following
content.
[user]
email = your.email@address.com
Obviously, use the correct email address for each profile. Now remove
the email config from your global .gitconfig file, which
is usually in your user’s home directory. If you’re not sure where it
is, you can run
git config --show-origin user.email
to check. Once you’ve removed it, run
git config --get user.email
to confirm that it’s unset. Now add the following sections to your
global .gitconfig file.
[includeIf "gitdir:D:/git/home/"]
path = D:/git/home/.gitconfig
[includeIf "gitdir:D:/git/work/"]
path = D:/git/work/.gitconfig
Replace D:/git/home/ with the paths to the directories
you created earlier. Git will now pull in these config files whenever
you’re working in a repository inside those directories.
You can test this by navigating to a Git repository inside one of your directories and running
git config --get user.email
but note that you need to be inside a Git repository, not just the
root directory—
Technically, you don’t need to remove your email configuration from
the global .gitconfig file—includeIf blocks appear below your email configuration,
they will take precedent. However, I prefer to remove it to make it
clearer that the value there isn’t used, and to force me to put all
of my Git repositories inside one of my profile
directories—
And that’s it—