Using different Git email address for personal projects and work —15 June 2019

In my ~/.gitconfig I like to use an email address that includes the hostname, for example on my laptop called kronos I have this:

[user]
    name = Janos Gyerik
    email = info+kronos@janosgyerik.com

This is useful sometimes to locate the computer where I did a particular work, which implies I must have a fully working environment.

However, for work on repositories of my day job, I should use consistently my work email address. On the occasion that I work from home, I’ve been manually doing git config user.email ... in work repositories.

Unfortunately, sometimes I forget to do this, a few times my personal email address leaked into work projects, and I had to clean up later.

No more! The not-so-recent conditional includes feature to the rescue.

I added this in my ~/.gitconfig:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/dev/git/my-workplace/"]
    path = ~/dev/git/my-workplace/gitconfig

Created the file ~/dev/git/my-workplace/gitconfig with the content:

[user]
    email = my-work-email

And moved all my worktrees of work projects under ~/dev/git/my-workplace.