Using keep-sorted to keep your ~/.gitconfig tidy

★ Using keep-sorted to keep your ~/.gitconfig tidy

06 Mar, 2025 • 365 words • 2 min • updated 16 Feb, 2026

⚠️ This post is over one year old. It may no longer be up to date or relevant. Opinions may have changed.

I tend to sort my ~/.gitconfig headings to keep the config tidy.

An example:

     ini
     
   
[...]
# https://git-scm.com/docs/git-rerere
[rerere]
	autoUpdate = true
	enabled = true

[status]
	# Show individual files in untracked directories.
	showUntrackedFiles = all
	short = true
	branch = true

[submodule]
	# Clone new submodules in parallel with as many jobs.
	fetchJobs = 0
[...]

This was done manually. Until…today.

It has just occurred to me¹ I could use keep-sorted with the headings.

Previously:

— keep-sorted — pre-commit

But…how?!

The usage to sort, say, aliases, is quite straightforward²:

[alias]
	# keep-sorted begin
	bd = !branch="$(git branch --show-current)" && git default && git branch -D "${branch:-$1}"
	blank = desc -m \"blank commit\"
	cm = commit
	co = checkout
	cp = cherry-pick
	dc = diff --cached
	default = !git checkout main &>/dev/null || git checkout master
	desc = commit --allow-empty -n
	emerge = !git add -A . && git amend -n && git pushm --force-with-lease
	nb = switch --create
        [...]
	# keep-sorted finish

How can you apply the same technique to headings?

The out-of-the-box utilization is OK-ish, but not great:

From:

     ini
     
   
# keep-sorted begin
[fetch]
	prune = true

[help]
	autocorrect = 10

[format]
	# Automatically sign-off patches when using format-patch.
	signoff = true
# keep-sorted finish

To:

     ini
     
   
# keep-sorted start

[fetch]
	prune = true
[format]
	# Automatically sign-off patches when using format-patch.
	signoff = true
[help]
	autocorrect = 10
# keep-sorted end

(including the blank line at the top)

It turns out all we have to do is a little bit of tweaking:

     ini
     
   
# keep-sorted begin block=yes newline_separated=yes
[fetch]
	prune = true

[help]
	autocorrect = 10

[format]
	# Automatically sign-off patches when using format-patch.
	signoff = true
# keep-sorted finish

…which then becomes:

     ini
     
   
# keep-sorted begin block=yes newline_separated=yes
[fetch]
	prune = true

[format]
	# Automatically sign-off patches when using format-patch.
	signoff = true

[help]
	autocorrect = 10
# keep-sorted finish

How nice!

Can you even imagine? Having original ideas? In 2025? Without LLMs?! Is this even real?? ↩︎
I replaced start -> begin and end -> finish otherwise keep-sorted would sort this blog post itself. If you copy and paste this example, remember to change the words back to the original ones. ↩︎

Backlinks

go/keep-sorted (Sep 22, 2025)

¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)