Stop Fighting Git: Advanced Configuration to Make Git Work For You

Jordan Duabe shared amazing tips on customizing your git and workflow

Oct 17, 2025

At the recent GitHub Meetup, polyglot developer Jordan Duabe shared a brilliant masterclass on customizing your workflow, centered on the philosophy: git config --make-git-work-for-you.

Git is a powerful tool, but most developers only scratch the surface of its configuration options. By diving into your global .gitconfig, you can transform your daily interactions, saving keystrokes, automating repetitive tasks, and even improving the readability of your codebase reviews.

Fundamentals

I appreciate the fundamentals of Git are skipped over in the items below. So you may want to start here.

Here are the most impactful Git configuration changes shared from the session, covering everything from quality-of-life improvements to advanced security and contextual setups.

1. Quality of Life: Aliases, Autocorrect, and Shorter Commands

Why type git status when you can just type git st? Git aliases are a fundamental time-saver, and Jordan demonstrated how to build a robust set:

You can add these to your global config:

Pro Tip: Combine aliases with Git’s built-in correction feature:

# Enables prompt for suggested corrections on mistyped commands (e.g., git cx -> git checkout)

git config --global help.autocorrect prompt

2. Better Diffs and Log Cleanup

Your daily life in Git often involves looking at differences, and a better diff can dramatically improve code review speed and clarity.

A Smarter Diff Algorithm

Git’s default diff algorithm (myers) is decades old. The newer histogram algorithm is generally faster and more efficient at identifying moved or changed blocks of code, resulting in smarter diffs.

# Use the smarter diff algorithm

git config --global diff.algorithm histogram

# Enable clever renaming detection and better color coding for moved lines

git config --global diff.renames true

git config --global diff.color

Note: Patience is a precursor to histogram (see breakdown here)

3. Workflow Automation: The Rebase Revolution

If your team relies on rebasing to maintain a clean, linear history, these four settings will drastically simplify your life:

Auto-Rebase on Pull (pull.rebase true): Automatically use git rebase instead of git merge when running git pull.
git config --global pull.rebase true
Auto-Squash for Fixup Commits (rebase.autoSquash true): This is a game-changer for cleaning up history. When combined with git commit --fixup=<SHA>, git rebase -i will automatically mark your fixup commits to be squashed into their target commit.
Auto-Stash During Rebase (rebase.autoStash true): If you have uncommitted changes, Git will automatically stash them, perform the pull/rebase, and then re-apply your stash.
The DRY Principle: Re-Re-Re-solve Conflicts (rerere.enabled true): Git can actually remember how you resolved a conflict the last time you saw it. Enabling “Reuse Recorded Resolution” means Git will auto-apply your previous resolution if the same conflict crops up again during a series of rebases.

4. Advanced: Contextual Configs and Security

Conditional Includes for Context Switching

Do you use one email for work and another for your Open Source contributions? Using Conditional Includes (includeif) lets Git load different config files based on the directory path.

In your main ~/.gitconfig:

[includeif “gitdir:~/oss/”]
    path = ~/.gitconfig-oss

[includeif “gitdir:~/work/”]
    path = ~/.gitconfig-work

Then, in ~/.gitconfig-oss, you can define your open-source identity:

[user]
    email = my-oss.email

Commit Signing for Non-Repudiation

To guarantee the authenticity of your commits and ensure non-repudiation, you should sign them with a GPG key.

# Set your signing key
git config --global user.signingKey XXXX

# Globally enable signing for all commits and tags
git config --global commit.gpgSign true
git config --global tag.gpgSign true

You can verify the signature with git log --show-signature.

Lloyd

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