5.4. Summary

This has been a substantial amount of information regarding various configuration types, methods, and files. After this lecture, you have greatly broadened your horizon about configurations of datasets:

  • Configurations exist at different scopes and for different tools. Each of such configuration scopes exists in an individual file, on a system-wide, global (user-specific) or local (repository specific) level. In addition to Git’s local scope in .git/config, DataLad introduces its own configurations within .datalad/config that apply to a specific dataset, but are committed and therefore distributed. More specialized scopes take precedence over more global scopes.

  • Almost all configurations can be set with the git config (manual) command. Its structure looks like this:

    git config --local/--global/--system --add/remove-all/--list section.[subsection.]variable "value"

  • The .git/config configuration file is not version controlled, other configuration files (.gitmodules, .gitattributes, .datalad/config) however are, and can be shared together with the dataset. Non-shared configurations will take precedence over shared configurations in a dataset clone.

  • Other tools than Git can be configured with the git config command as well. If configurations needs to be written to a file other than a .git(/)config file, supply a path to this file with the -f/--file flag in a git config command.

  • The .gitattributes file is the only configuration file the git config command cannot write to, because it has a different layout. However, run-procedures or the user can write simple rules into it that determine which files are annexed and which are stored in Git.

  • DataLad’s run-procedures offer an easy and fast alternative to DIY configurations, structuring, or processing of the dataset, and offer means to share or ship configurations together with a dataset. They can be applied already at creation of a dataset with datalad create -c <procedure>, or executed later with a datalad run-procedure (manual) command.

5.4.1. Now what can I do with it?

Configurations are not a closed book for you anymore. What will probably be especially helpful is your new knowledge about .gitattributes and DataLad’s run-procedure command that allow you to configure the behavior of git-annex in your dataset.