Level 5

Task: To configure git properly , and explore additional usage of git log.

Lets recap

Up until you have seen the following commands

git status # to check the status of the repo 
git log # to see the commit history
git add # to add files to the staging area
git commit # to commit the staged files
git log # to see the commit history
git branch # to see the branches
git checkout # to switch branches

And you will need to use most of them inorder to complete this level.

Configuring Git

Let's start by properly configuring git. I have already explained git log in Level 3 of this course. And you may remember the following, a single log entry may look like this.

You can see that , there are a few details like

• Your name
• Your email
• The commit message
• The date and time of the commit etc.
  But have you ever thought from where did the git obtains this information?.
  if you type the following:

git config --get user.name

you will obtain the following

Arun CS

and to get the email run the following.

git config --get user.email

aruncs31ss@gmail.com

I was able to get this because i configured it , when i installed git.
In order to configure things like name and email , run the following

git config user.name "Arun CS"

For example if you want to change you name to something like "Dog", you can run the following command:

git config user.name "Dog"

This type of configuration is called local or project or repo level configuration. What i mean by that is that , look at the following example,

when i run

git config --get user.name

it prints Dog , but when i change repo , or directory the name also changes.
To make the changes global you should use the --global flag like this,

git config --global user.name "Arun CS"

So there are 2 types of configuration , and the are global and local and stored in ~/.gitconfig and .git/config respectively.

graph LR
		A[Git Config] --> B[Global Config]
		A --> C[Local Config]
		B --> D[~/.gitconfig]
		C --> E[.git/config]

cat ~/.gitconfig

[user]
name = Arun CS
mail = aruncs31ss@gmail.com
email = aruncs31ss@gmail.com
[http]
postBuffer = 524288000

cat .git/config

[core]
repositoryformatversion = 0
filemode = true
bare = false
logallrefupdates = true
ignorecase = true
precomposeunicode = true
[remote "origin"]
url = https://github.com/aruncs31s/git_by_doing_level_5
fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

[branch "main"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/main
[user]
name = Dog

• check this is true if not modify it. 🏁 delete
  FAQ: Where these name and mail id used
• Others can easily verify who made the commit.
• And it is required for features like git blame, which shows who last modified each line of a file.

Where these will be used?

You have already learned about git commit and git log in Level 3 , right?. So when you do a git log you see see the following right?

• Your name
• Your email
• The commit message
  
  We can use this git log and git blame to identify who made some specific
  For example you can check if someone named zeidan had made any commit , and what they have changed , for the time beeing we will not focus on git blame it will be coverd in another level
• mention in which level the git blame is covered. 🏁 delete

git log --author=zeidan

There is only single commit becouse , zeidan has done only one commit , and if you also want what he have changed you can include the -p flag

git log --author=zeidan -p

So you get a lot of infomation from using git log and with the -p flag.