How to use different git profiles by folder

05/16/2022

TLDR: Create a separate .gitconfig file to be used when you're inside a specific folder.

Problem

Let's say you start in a new job and will use the same computer for developing personal and work projects. The company might request that you set the corporate e-mail on you git config for work commits, which would be done like this:

$ git config --global user.email "email@company.com"

Although simple, this solution would cause the commits on your personal projects to be sent with the corporate e-mail as well, which is not ideal. Here's the solution I found after going through this recently.

Solution

As I had never faced this issue before, my first thought was: "Is there a way to set different git user infos depending on the folder I'm in?". This came to mind because I had already created such folder to keep work files separate from personal stuff, like ~/company/git/some_cloned_repo. So, the search I did on Google for that was "per folder gitconfig", for which the first result was this Stack Overflow question.

You might check that there's a ~/.gitconfig file that looks something like this:

# This is Git's per-user configuration file.
[user]
# Please adapt and uncomment the following lines:
    name = Your name
    email = personal@email.com
[init]
    defaultBranch = main

The solution is, given that you have a folder in which all work content is gonna be:

Create a new git config file specific to your work, like ~/.gitconfig-company:
```
[user]
    name = Your name
    email = email@company.com
```
Append the following lines to the end of the original git config file, ~/.gitconfig:
```
[includeIf "gitdir:~/company/"]
    path = .gitconfig-company
```

Now you can check if it's working by typing the git config user.email command. It should print:

email@company.com if run inside the ~/company folder and subfolders;
personal@email.com if run outside the ~/company folder;

References

Stack Overflow question;