Git Identities

When having a personal and a work identity for Git there is additional configuration required to let Git know when to use which identity.

Sometimes it is desired to overwrite the default gitconfig. This can be done by creating another .gitconfig configuration anywhere, and referencing it in the main ~/.gitconfig file. The includeIf option is used to specify when a .gitconfig file should be active:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/work/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig-work

It is important to always end the gitdir path with a forward slash /, otherwise it will not work!

This specifies that the ~/.gitconfig-work configuration should be used when inside a Git repository anywhere under the ~/work/ directory. The ~/.gitconfig-work can have a different name (user.name) and email address (user.email) for professional use.

Note that the config only applies when inside a Git project (a directory with a .git directory inside). To validate if the configuration is correct, navigate to an Git project anywhere under the ~/work/ directory and run the following command:

git config user.name && git config user.email

These commands show the current user.name and user.email used when creating new commits in the repository.