git global config not working

[Martin Holland]

If I create a new repo and attempt the first commit I get this error..

*** Please tell me who you are.

Run

git config --global user.email "you@example.com"

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

to set your account's default identity.

Omit --global to set the identity only in this repository.

however I know the global config is run, and even re-running those commands doesn't fix it. If I run

git config -l

I can see my email and name is already set ok.

It does work though if I omit the --global param and therefore set my email and name explicity for the current repository. So i have to do that every time I create a new repo for it to work.

Am new to git so may have this wrong but assumed that it should be able to pick up the global settings so I don't have to re-tell it my email and name for each repo?

[Martin Holland · Accepted solution]

FYI I fixed this in the end by changing my HOME environment variable. It was set to %UserProfile% which I assume git doesn't like so I changed it to explicity say C:\Users\Martin and then it all worked

[KieranA]

Thanks for the information, Martin. You may not have been running the same Git instance as the version you use at the command line. As we run Git in a separate process it doesn't honour environment variables like that. I haven't got an instance of the Windows version but I presume there'd be a preference which allows SourceTree to modify your Git/Mercurial settings which may not be set. You can also set your user information (e-mail/username) in there too, usually.

Glad you've got it working otherwise.