2.36. TortoiseGit's Settings

Selects your user interface language. What else did you expect? Only languages of installed LanguagePacks are listed. You can download language packs on the TortoiseGit download page or help translating.

If checked, TortoiseGit will contact its download site once a week to see if there is a newer version of the program available. Use Check now if you want an answer right away. The new version will not be downloaded; you simply receive an information dialog telling you that the new version is available.

On Windows 7 you can create a Library in which to group working copies which are scattered in various places on your system.

TortoiseGit needs to know which git.exe to use for it's operations. Enter the full path to git.exe here.

	Caution
	git.exe must not be marked to be run in elevated mode (i.e. "Run as administrator" or run in any compatibility mode).

	Caution
	There is a known issue in msysGit/Git for Windows: Git for Windows provides two git.exe-files (one in a folder named bin and one in a folder named cmd). Make sure Git.exe Path points to the bin-folder within the Git for Windows installation folder.

	Caution
	If you don't use Git for Windows, please see the sections for "Cygwin git" and "Msys2 git" below as special settings are required here. As a general note: There is no official support for Cygwin or Msys2 git in TortoiseGit. The TortoiseGit developers only use Git for Windows. Bug reports, however, are welcome.

	Tip
	In order to debug problems you can open TortoiseGit advanced settings and set "DebugOutputString" to "true" (Section 2.36.10, “Advanced Settings”). Start capturing the debug output. Then start TortoiseGit settings, click on Check now and observe the debug messages.

If your git installation needs an extra entry in the PATH environment variable, you can enter it here and it will get added to the PATH environment variable automatically when TortoiseGit starts.

This is especially needed if you installed the developer version of msysGit ("Full installer (self-contained) if you want to hack on Git" with the filename msysGit-fullinstall-*.exe), in this case it is necessary that the [MSYSGIT-INSTALL-PATH]\mingw\bin-folder is on the path (i.e. entered in the Extra PATH textbox) in order to execute git.exe.

Often you can see if you need this when you start git.exe in [MSYSGIT-INSTALL-PATH]\mingw\bin-folder and you get a messagebox saying that a dll is missing.

As noted above: There is no official support for Cygwin git in TortoiseGit (do not enable this for the "Git for Windows package!). The TortoiseGit developers only use Git for Windows. Bug reports, however, are welcome. If you really want to use it here are the steps you have to perform:

1) Select the [CYGWIN-INSTALL-PATH]\bin-folder as git.exe folder.

2) Configure the HOME environment variable in Windows, so that Cygwin and TortoiseGit are using the same home directory and global git-config. Use the normal Windows notation here (e.g., "C:\Users\USERNAME"). By default, TortoiseGit uses the Windows home directory which is normally located under c:\Users and Cygwin uses its own home directories which are located under [CYGWIN-INSTALL-PATH]\home.

3) Configure AutoCrLf, this is necessary as TortoiseGit and Cygwin Git have different defaults. The default in Cygwin Git is true.

4) Go to TortoiseGit Section 2.36.10, “Advanced Settings” and set CygwinHack to true in order to activate cygwin workarounds.

5) Reboot.

As noted above: There is no official support for Msys2 git in TortoiseGit (do not enable this for the "Git for Windows package!). The TortoiseGit developers only use Git for Windows. Bugreports, however, are welcome. If you really want to use it here are the steps you have to perform:

1) Select the [MSYS2-INSTALL-PATH]\usr\bin-folder as git.exe folder.

2) Configure the HOME environment variable in Windows, so that Msys2 and TortoiseGit are using the same home directory and global git-config. Use the normal Windows notation here (e.g., "C:\Users\USERNAME"). By default, TortoiseGit uses the Windows home directory which is normally located under c:\Users and Msys2 uses its own home directories which are located under [MSYS2-INSTALL-PATH]\home.

3) Configure AutoCrLf, this is necessary as TortoiseGit and Msys2 Git might have different defaults.

4) Go to TortoiseGit Section 2.36.10, “Advanced Settings” and set Msys2Hack to true in order to activate Msys2 workarounds.

5) Reboot.

Caches all status information in a separate process (TGitCache.exe). That process watches all drives for changes and fetches the status again if files inside a working tree get modified. The process runs with the least possible priority so other programs don't get hogged because of it. That also means that the status information is not real time but it can take a few seconds for the overlays to change.

Advantage: the overlays show the status recursively, i.e. if a file deep inside a working tree is modified, all folders up to the working tree root will also show the modified overlay. And since the process can send notifications to the shell, the overlays on the left tree view usually change too.

Disadvantage: the process runs constantly, even if you're not working on your projects. It also uses around 10-50 MB of RAM depending on number and size of your working trees. From version 1.7.0 to 1.7.12 TGitCache did not check the contents of the files, it just checked the last modification time against the time stored in the git index file. Starting from 1.7.13 TGitCache now also checks the contents of the files by default. If you want to restore the old behavior, you can disable checking the contents via the Settings dialog -> Advanced and set TGitCacheCheckContentMaxSize to "0".

Caching is done directly inside the shell extension dll. Each time you navigate to another folder, the status information is fetched again (recursively).

Advantage: can show the status in real time.

Disadvantage: only one folder is cached and for big working trees, it can take much more time to show a folder in explorer than with the default cache or with shell mode. The Shell variant only shows differences of the filesystem to the git index (does not include revision specific information, e.g. if you remove a file from the index the file will show up as unversioned, but with TGitCache the file will show up as deleted until you commit this change).

Caching is done directly inside the shell extension dll, but only for the currently visible folder. Each time you navigate to another folder, the status information is fetched again.

Advantage: needs only very little memory (around 1 MB of RAM) and can show the status in real time.

Disadvantage: Since only one folder is cached, the overlays don't show the status recursively. For big working trees, it can take more time to show a folder in explorer than with the default cache. The Shell variant only shows differences of the filesystem to the git index (does not include revision specific information, e.g. if you remove a file from the index the file will show up as unversioned, but with TGitCache the file will show up as deleted until you commit this change).

With this setting, the TortoiseGit does not fetch the status at all in Explorer. Because of that, files don't get an overlay and folders only get a 'normal' overlay if they're versioned. No other overlays are shown, and no extra columns are available either.

Advantage: uses absolutely no additional memory and does not slow down the Explorer at all while browsing.

Disadvantage: Status information of files and folders is not shown in Explorer. To see if your working trees are modified, you have to use the “Check for modifications” dialog.

Whenever you checkout a working tree, merge changes or use the repository browser, TortoiseGit keeps a record of recently used URLs and offers them in a combo box. Sometimes that list gets cluttered with outdated URLs so it is useful to flush it out periodically.

If you want to remove a single item from one of the combo boxes you can do that in-place. Just click on the arrow to drop the combo box down, move the mouse over the item you want to remove and type Shift+Del.

TortoiseGit stores recent commit log messages that you enter. These are stored per repository, so if you access many repositories this list can grow quite large.

TortoiseGit caches log messages fetched by the Show Log dialog to save time when you next show the log. If someone else edits a log message and you already have that message cached, you will not see the change until you clear the cache. Log message caching is enabled on the Log Cache tab.

Many dialogs remember the size and screen position that you last used.

TortoiseGit keeps a log of everything written to its progress dialogs. This can be useful when, for example, you want to check what happened in a recent update command.

The log file is limited in length and when it grows too big the oldest content is discarded. By default 4000 lines are kept, but you can customize that number.

From here you can view the log file content, and also clear it.

Called before the commit dialog is shown. You might want to use this if the hook modifies a versioned file and affects the list of files that need to be committed and/or commit message. However you should note that because the hook is called at an early stage, the full list of objects selected for commit is not available.

Called after the user clicks OK in the commit dialog, and before the actual commit begins. This hook has a list of exactly what will be committed.

Called after the commit finished successfully.

Called before actual Git push begins.

Called after pushing finishes (whether successful or not).

Called before rebasing starts (after clicking on Start or autostart).

PATH MESSAGEFILE CWD

PATH MESSAGEFILE CWD

CWD (commit was amend (true or false))

ERROR CWD

ERROR CWD

(upstream branch) (rebased branch) ERROR CWD

A path to a temporary file which contains all the paths for which the operation was started. Each path is on a separate line in the temp file.

Path to a file containing the log message for the commit. The file contains the text in UTF-8 encoding. After successful execution of the start-commit and pre-commit hooks, the log message is read back, giving the hook a chance to modify it.

Path to a file containing the error message. If there was no error, the file will be empty.

The current working directory with which the script is run. This is set to the working tree root.

TortoiseGitBlame can use the background colour to indicate the age of lines in a file. You set the endpoints by specifying the colours for the newest and oldest revisions, and TortoiseGitBlame uses a linear interpolation between these colours according to the repository revision indicated for each line.

You can select the font used to display the text, and the point size to use. This applies both to the file content, and to the author and revision information shown in the left pane.

Defines how many spaces to use for expansion when a tab character is found in the file content.

Disabled Traditional blame algorithm, the search for parents is limited to the file and will follow renames.

Within file Extra passes of inspection are applied to detect moved and copied lines within the file (git blame -M).

From modified files In addition to the annotated file detect moved or copied lines from all modified files within a commit (git blame -C).

At file creation In addition to the annotated file and the modified files within a commit detect moved or copied lines from other files in the commit that creates the file (git blame -C -C).

From existing files In addition detect moved or modified lines from other files in any commit (git blame -C -C -C).

Lower bound on the number of alphanumeric characters that Git must detect as moving/copying between files for it to associate those lines with the parent commit.

Within a file Number of alphanumeric characters required to detect moving lines within a file (git blame -M|<num>|).

Between files Number of alphanumeric characters required to detect moved or copied lines between files (git blame -C|<num>|).

Defines if whitespace is ignored when comparing the parent's version and the child's version to find where the lines came from (git blame -w).

Defines if the log should be complete, i.e. the log contains all changes for a file, even the changes have no impact on the file content of the annotated revision. If deactivated the log contains only revisions which last modified a line for the annotated revision.

Defines if the log should follow renames, i.e. if the log does not stop when a file was renamed in the past, but include all changes before the rename.

The default colors used by TortoiseGitUDiff are usually ok, but you can configure them here.

You can select the font used to display the text, and the point size to use.

Defines how many spaces to use for expansion when a tab character is found in the file diff.

The minimum amount of chars from which the editor shows an auto-completion popup. The default value is 3.

The auto-completion list shown in the commit message editor can parse source code files and displays methods and variable names. This limits files to be parsed by their size in bytes. The default value is 300000.

The auto-completion list shown in the commit message editor can parse source code files and displays methods and variable names. By default only versioned files are parsed. Set this value to true in order to also parse unversioned files.

The auto-completion list shown in the commit message editor displays the names of files listed for commit. To also include these names with extensions removed, set this value to true.

If you don't want the explorer to update the status overlays while another TortoiseGit command is running (e.g. Update, Commit, ...) then set this value to true.

To add a cache tray icon for the TGitCache program, set this value to true. This is really only useful for developers as it allows you to terminate the program gracefully.

To disable loading and saving cache for the TGitCache program, set this value to false. This is useful if you do not want to write the cache to disk, which can be a large file. The default is true.

This enables some workarounds which enables TortoiseGit to be used with Cygwin Git. Cygwin Git, however, is not officially supported by TortoiseGit. See Section 2.36.1, “General Settings” for more information. The default is false.

Set this to true if you want a dialog to pop up for every command showing the command line used to start TortoiseGitProc.exe.

Set this to true if you want TortoiseGit to print out debug messages during execution. The messages can be captured with special debugging tools only (like Debug View from the SysInternals Suite).

The status list control which is used in various dialogs (e.g., commit, check-for-modifications, add, revert, ...) uses full row selection (i.e., if you select an entry, the full row is selected, not just the first column). This is fine, but the selected row then also covers the background image on the bottom right, which can look ugly. To disable full row select, set this value to false.

This option determines how the Win7 taskbar icons of the various TortoiseGit dialogs and windows are grouped together. This option has no effect on Windows Vista!

This has no effect if the option GroupTaskbarIconsPerRepo is set to 0 (see above).

If this option is set to true, then every icon on the Win7 taskbar shows a small colored rectangle overlay, indicating the working tree the dialogs/windows are used for.

Figure 2.99. Taskbar grouping with repository color overlays

This option defines whether the commit of a submodule to which the super repository points to is highlighted with a branch like label (cf. issue #2826). The default is true.

This options sets the maximum browse ref history (Right click ref hyperlink to find it). The default is 5.

This enables some workarounds which enables TortoiseGit to be used with Msys2 Git (do not enable this for the Git for Windows package!). Msys2 Git, however, is not officially supported by TortoiseGit. See Section 2.36.1, “General Settings” for more information. The default is false.

This option toggles if the branches are sorted fully by name (true) or if local branches should appear above remote ones (git default, false). The default value is false.

If you want to show the diff at once for more items than specified with this settings, a warning dialog is shown first. The default is 10.

The Git progress dialog shows the output of the executed git.exe commands. The number of lines are limited for performance reasons. The default is 50000, minimum is 50.

This option toggles the re-adding of unselected added files after a commit. Up to TortoiseGit 1.7.10 added files which were not checked on a commit, were removed from the index and unversioned after the commit. Set this value to false to restore the old behavior. Set this value to true to readd these files again after the commit (default).

This option toggles whether the file lists of the commit dialog, resolve conflicts and rebase dialog automatically refresh when a conflict is marked as resolved. By default this is set to true, but in certain cases, e.g. when refreshing takes lots of time or you want to prevent the scrolling to the top, this can be set to false. However, then a manual refresh (e.g. by pressing F5) is necessary.

This option toggles whether the file lists of the add, commit, revert, resolve and rebase dialog remember the last selected line on a refresh. The default is true.

This option trims space, CR, LF characters at the end of commit messages you enter. This covers commit, rebase, notes, annotated tag. This value is true by default. If such trimming breaks your scripts/plugins, you can disable trimming by set it to false.

This option enables the use of Direct2D accelerated drawing in the Scintilla control which is used as the edit box in e.g. the commit dialog (also for the attached patch window), the unified diff viewer and TortoiseGitBlame. With some graphic cards, however, this sometimes doesn't work properly so that the cursor to enter text isn't always visible, the redraw does not work or the background is flashing. It's disabled by default. You can turn this feature on by setting this value to true.

TortoiseGit uses accelerators for its explorer context menu entries. Since this can lead to doubled accelerators (e.g. the Git Commit has the Alt-C accelerator, but so does the Copy entry of explorer). If you don't want or need the accelerators of the TortoiseGit entries, set this value to false.

This can be useful if you use something other than the windows explorer or if you get problems with the context menu displaying incorrectly. Set this value to false if you don't want TortoiseGit to show icons for the shell context menu items. Set this value to true to show the icons again.

If you don't want TortoiseGit to show icons for the context menus in its own dialogs, set this value to false.

If you do not want to have a small background image in list controls (e.g. Commit Dialog) set this value to false. Set this value to true to show the images again (default).

Using this setting you can control which date is used on squashing commits. Set this value to 1 if you want to use the date of the latest commit. Set this value to 2 if you want to use the current date. Set this value to 0 to use the date of the first commit (into which all others are squashed, default).

The commit and log dialog use styling (e.g. bold, italic) in commit messages (see Section 2.5.3, “Commit Log Messages” for details). If you don't want to do this, set the value to false.

TGitCache checks the content of files by hashing them and comparing the SHA1 in order to calculate the file statuses if the timestamps (to index) mismatch. This option allows to restrict this behavior for files which do not exceed a specific size (in KiB). The default maximum file size is 10 MiB (i.e., 10 * 1024 KiB = 10240 KiB). Set this to 0 in order to make TGitCache only check the timestamps (as TortoiseGit 1.7.0 up to 1.7.12 did; before TortoiseGit 1.9.0.0 this was controlled by TGitCacheCheckContent). Disabling checking the file contents can lower disk access and CPU time of the TGitCache process, however, overlay accuracy might not be as accurate as with checking of the file contents enabled.

This makes TortoiseGit to use libgit2 as much as possible (e.g. for adding files to the index). If you do not want TortoiseGit to use libgit2 for file operations, set this value to false.

TortoiseGit checks whether there's a new version available about once a week. If you don't want TortoiseGit to do this check, set this value to false.

Set this to true to make TortoiseGit also check for new preview releases. The default in all stable releases is false.