How to use git (git config --global)?

Question

The Pragmatic Guide to GIT has the following \"Git uses both to calculate the commit ID—a SHA-111 hash—that identifies each commit.\" in page 21.

And in page 22, I can u

Answer 1

Not sure where "smcho" comes from, but the setting to set your name is user.name:

git config --global user.name "Your Name"

You can set your e-mail address too:

git config --global user.email "name@domain.example"

I guess the reason it complains about the lack of a section is that the name of the parameter to set probably needs to be in two parts: section.parameter_name (You can see the sections names within [] if you look in the configuration file, for example in .git/config).

(None of this is specific to OSX as far as I'm aware.)

Answer 2

to edit the whole config file

git config --global --edit

Answer 3

A simple answer to this question/problem is that do not replace "user.name" with your actual git username leave the user.name as it is the command needs to be:

git config --global user.name "Your Name here only"

Answer 4

This error is because you have this word (smcho) at the beginning of your .gitconfig file at home directory.

Bit late, but could be useful to somebody.