Can I load one .gitconfig file from another? [duplicate]

Answer 1

(March 2012) It looks like this is finally going to be possible soon -- git 1.7.10 is going to support this syntax in .gitconfig:

[include]
    path = /path/to/file

See here for a detailed description of the git change and its edge cases.

By the way, a couple of subtleties worth pointing out:

1. Path expansion, e.g. ~ or $HOME, does not appear to be supported.

2. If a relative path is specified, then it is relative to the .gitconfig file that has the [include] statement. This works correctly even across chained includes -- e.g. ~/.gitconfig can have:

   [include]
       path = subdir/gitconfig
   

   and subdir/gitconfig can have:

   [include]
       path = nested_subdir/gitconfig
   

   ... which will cause subdir/nested_subdir/gitconfig to be loaded.

3. If git can't find the target file, it silently ignores the error. This appears to be by design.