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System Properties

The vast majority of SmartGit’s system properties can be configured by editing the file smartgit.properties in the settings directory.

Note

The file smartgit.properties contains only settings for SmartGit itself. If you want to configure your Git repositories, have a look at the various Git configuration files instead, such as .git/config for the configuration of individual Git repositories, and ~\.gitconfig (in your HOME directory) for global configuration options.

First, open the settings directory. Its default location is described in Default Location of SmartGit’s Settings Directory. In the settings directory, you will find the smartgit.properties file. Open it with a text editor, such as Windows Notepad.

Each of the settings in smartgit.properties is specified on a separate line, according to the following syntax: key=value. If a line starts with#, the entire line is treated as a comment and ignored by the program.

The following list shows the available system property keys:

Interaction with Git

smartgit.executable.home

By default, Git will search for user configuration files (primarily .gitconfig) in the directory specified by the $HOME environment variable.

Sometimes $HOME passed to SmartGit might not be identical to $HOME available from command line due to specific system configurations. To make SmartGit use the same configuration anyway, specify this property.

Sometimes $HOME might point to a network location which may result in performance problems. In this case, you should create a local HOME directory to use for SmartGit, replicate your .gitconfig into this directory and finally point SmartGit to this directory using smartgit.executable.home.

Example

This specifies a different HOME-directory on Linux/Mac:

smartgit.executable.home=/path/to/home
                       

This specifies a different HOME-directory on Windows (make sure to use forward slashes):

smartgit.executable.home=c:/Documents and Settings/user/App Data/syntevo/SmartGit/home
                       

smartgit.executable.language

By default, SmartGit will invoke Git with environment variable LANG=C set. Use this system property to change the language passed to Git, for example: smartgit.executable.language=en_EN.UTF-8. To skip the LANG environment variable, set smartgit.executable.language=.

smartgit.core.jgit.streamFileThreshold

This option roughly specifies the maximum Git object size (in MB) to be loaded directly into memory. This helps to avoid out-of-memory-errors, but on the other hand certain operations may become extremely slow. This value may be used to tune performance, but it should be chosen with care!

smartgit.core.merge.shortCommitMessage

When merging, Git’s verbose default messages are used. If you prefer shorter, easier readable messages (as default until SmartGit 5), set this value to true.

smartgit.core.push.recurseSubmodulesCheck

By default, SmartGit invokes “git push” using the “–recurse-submodules=check” option (Git 1.7.7 and above). To disable the check for not yet pushed submodule commits which are referenced in the parent repository, set this option to false.

smartgit.core.push.onlyToFirstMatchingTarget

By default, SmartGit will push to all branches which have been declared by (multiple) remote.<name>.push declarations (like command line Git does). To make SmartGit stop after pushing to the first branch, set this option to true.

smartgit.core.shortShaLength

This option specifies the short SHA length, to be used by SmartGit (mainly for displaying). Valid values are in the range between 4 to 40.

smartgit.projectState.enabled

By default, SmartGit will scan for outgoing commits. This may slow down the program for large repositories. To disable the scan, set the value to false.

smartgit.refresh.scanIntoSubmodules

Set to false to make the Refresh skip scanning submodule folders.

smartgit.refresh.checkAssumeUnchangedFiles

By default, SmartGit will check whether ‘assume-unchanged’ files are really unchanged or not. To disable this check, set the option to false.

smartgit.refresh.inspectEol

Set to true to have SmartGit distinguish between content and EOL-only changes, in addition to the plain modified state which Git reports (in either case, files which Git considers as modified will be reported). If you do not want Git to care about EOLs at all (that’s usually the case if you are on Windows), you might want to use core.autocrlf or text and eol attributes.

smartgit.storeProjectPathRelativeToApplicationRoot

If set to true, repository paths are stored relative to the SmartGit install location (useful for portable bundles).

smartgit.core.jgit.similarityFileSizeLimit

The detection of renamed files is by default disabled for very large files. Use this option to adjust when a file is considered ‘large’. The value should be given in bytes, like 1000000.

smartgit.submoduleUpdate.useGit

By default, SmartGit is rather conservative when updating submodules: for instance modified submodules won’t be touched, even if the registered commit in the parent repository has changed. Sometimes it may be convenient to still ‘update’ these submodules, e.g. by merging local commits with the changed, registered commit. This is what ‘git submodule update’ will do, if key ‘submodule.$name.update’ is properly configured in .git/config of the parent repository. To invoke ‘git submodule update’ for modified submodules, set this value to true.

smartgit.core.clone.noHardLinks

If you are encountering problems when cloning a local repository to/from a mapped network drive, it may be necessary to add ‘–no-hardlinks’ for ‘git clone’. To achieve that, set this option to true. Do not forget to reset the option, once you have cloned successfully.

smartgit.ssh.defaultUser

If an SSH-URL does not contain ‘user@’, SmartGit will by default use the system user name to authenticate at the SSH server. Use this property to change to a custom default user name.

smartgit.branch.otherRefs

Use this option to configure additional other refs to be displayed in the Branches view; the default value is notes. To include e.g. archive-refs, set to notes;archive.

smartgit.branch.tagExcludeRegEx

To exclude certain tags from being processed by SmartGit, specify a regular expression matching the corresponding tag names (not including refs/tags/). This can be useful if you have a large amount of auto-generated tags which may slow down various SmartGit operations, especially related to the Log.

Example

To exclude all tags starting with the prefix autotag-, specify:

smartgit.branch.tagExcludeRegEx=autotag-.*
                       

smartgit.branch.remoteBranchExcludeRegEx

To exclude certain remote branches from being processed by SmartGit, specify a regular expression matching the corresponding remote branch names (not including refs/remotes/<remote>). For details, see smartgit.branch.tagExcludeRegEx.

smartgit.revert.commitMessageTemplate

Use this option to customize the commit message used by the Revert command: ${message} will be substituted by the commit’s message, ${sha} will be substituted by the commit’s SHA and \\n will be substituted by a newline character.

Example

To get the same commit message as set by command line Git, use:

                         smartgit.revert.commitMessageTemplate=revert "${message}"\n\nThis reverts commit ${sha}.
                       

smartgit.gitflow.finishFeature.message

Use this option to customize the default commit message used by the Finish Feature command. {0} will be substituted with the feature name.

Example:

smartgit.gitflow.finishFeature.message=Finished feature {0}.

 

smartgit.gitflow.tagLastReleaseCommitInsteadOfMaster, smartgit.gitflow.tagLastHotfixCommitInsteadOfMaster

Set the appropriate option to true to make SmartGit tag the last release/hotfix commit instead of the subsequent merge commit on master when finishing a Git-Flow release or hotfix.

SVN integration

smartgit.clone.svnAllowed

Set to false to disable the possibility to clone SVN repositories.

smartgit.defaultConnectionLogging

Set to true to have SVN connection logging enabled. This will create a connection.log in SmartGit’s settings directory which will be helpful for error diagnosis.

smartgit.svn.gitAttributesSizeThreshold

For certain SVN repositories, the .gitattributes file may become very large, which would slow down various (Smart)Git operations. For that reason, the mapping of svn:eol-style and svn:mime-type will be disabled if the size of the .gitattributes file exceeds the threshold specified by the specified value (in bytes). For more information, see http://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/documentation.html?page=concepts-svn To have the .gitattributes mapping always enabled, you may set the threshold to a large value.

smartgit.submoduleRecurseInUnchangedSvn

Set to true to enable recursion into unchanged SVN submodules when a submodule update is performed. This may be useful if you always want to fetch the latest revisions from an SVN repository even if the svn:external which is mapped to .gitsvnextmodules does require fetching these revisions.

smartgit.svn.glueFeature

Set to false to prevent glueing of multiple revisions together when performing an SVN clone. Glueing revisions together improves performance and usually has no negative side-effects. Sometimes, for large repositories, it may result in out-of-memory errors, though.

smartgit.svn.scanSubmodulesForNonSvnParents

Set to true to scan (refresh) SVN sub-modules for non-SVN parent repositories.

smartgit.svn.defaultCommitMessage

Use this option to change the default SVN “commit message” when e.g. pushing a tag. There are a couple of variables, which will be replaced by proper strings: {Action}, {Actiond}, {action}, {actiond}, {target}, {source}, {sourceRevision}.

Example

Some example definitions:

{Actiond} {target}{ from {source}{:{sourceRevision}}}
{target} {action} { from {source}{:{sourceRevision}}}

Processes

smartgit.filemonitor.enabled

Set to false to disable the file monitor (which watches for file system changes).

smartgit.filemonitor.excludeIgnoredDirectories

On Linux, SmartGit will by default not monitor files which are located in ignored directories. Usually this does not cause any problems but improves Refreshing performance and reduces required inotify handles. Sometimes ignored directories are containing tracked files in which case changes to these files might not show up automatically. If this is the case for you, you should disable this optimization by setting this system property to false.

smartgit.filemonitor.watchNonFixedDrives

On Windows, set this option to false to disable file monitoring for folders that lie on removable drives.

smartgit.filemonitor.watchUncPaths

On Windows, set this option to true to enable file monitoring for UNC paths. Depending on the network drive type, this may slow down file monitoring and/or may not work reliably.

smartgit.process.timeout

This setting specifies the number of seconds to wait for a response from a hanging external process before suggesting to kill it. Among other things, this helps to avoid hanging Git processes when trying to access a repository.

smartgit.disableCheckForNewVersion

Set to true to disable the automatic checking for new program versions. You should only turn this check off for network installations where SmartGit users may not be able to perform the update themselves.

Note that this will also disable notifications of new bugfix releases which you can upgrade to for free and which improve the reliability of SmartGit.

smartgit.updater.directory

Use this property to customize the program updater’s temporary directory, which is by default located in your home directory/profile. This should only be necessary if updating is not possible due to (file system) restrictions in this default directory, e.g. if execution of files is prevented by the system. On Windows, paths have to be specified using forward-slashes, like c:/temp.

Networking

java.net.preferIPv4Stack

By default, SmartGit prefers to connect via IPv4. To connect via IPv6 instead, set this option to false.

http.nonProxyHosts

Use these properties to specify servers to connect directly to, bypassing the configured proxy, for example: *.foo.com|localhost. Note, that only internal code of SmartGit is honoring http.nonProxyHosts. This does not include Git itself.

smartgit.proxy.configureForGit

Set this property to false if you have configured your http(s) proxy in SmartGit for accessing URLs outside your network, but your https-authenticated repositories are located inside your network and should not be tunneled through your proxy.

smartgit.proxy.timeout.connect and smartgit.proxy.timeout.read

These two settings specify the timeout in milliseconds for connecting to and for reading from a proxy, respectively. Proxies may be used e.g. by “SmartGit Updates”.

User Interface

smartgit.accelerators.tabCtrlI

By default Ctrl+I enters a tab character. SmartGit contains code to prevent this. To use the default behavior (disable SmartGit Ctrl+I code), select this option to true.

smartgit.browserCommand

By default the system browser is used on Windows and Mac. On Linux common browsers are tried to find. If you want to use a certain browser, you may set its path using this option.

smartgit.gui.dpiFactor

By default SmartGit tries to use the right scaling factor depending on the DPI setting of the operating system. On some systems (e.g. Linux), though, this does not work or needs tweaking. With this option you can set the dpiFactor to either 1 (= 100%) or 2 (200%).

smartgit.repository.showPath

Set to true to show the path behind closed repositories in the Repositories view.

smartgit.repository.favoriteSuffix

The Repositories view indicates favorite repositories with a trailing * behind the repository name. With this option you can define the used indicator, e.g. \u2605 for a filled 5-star, \u2606 for an outlined 5-star or \u2665 for a heart sign.

smartgit.branch.infoPrefix

The Branches view indicates pull requests with a leading (!) before the branch name. With this option you can define the used indicator, e.g. \u21b3 for a |_> arrow, \u2709 for an envelope or \u275e for bold double-quotes.

smartgit.branches.priority. <category>=<value>

The Branches view sorts groups in a certain order. By using these category constants you can set different values to change the order: plugin, flowFeatures, flowHotfixes, flowReleases, flowSupports, localBranches, remotes, tags, stashes, metaRefs, otherRefs, insignificantMerges, lostHeads.

smartgit.branches.head=<value>

The Branches view uses a unicode character to indicate the checked out branch. If you like to change that, set this property. To add a trailing line space, e.g., use the value "> ".

smartgit.branches.head.branch=<value>

This is similar as for smartgit.branches.head, but for the current checked out Hg branch while a bookmark is checked out.

smartgit.setupFinishedUrl

This setting specifies the URL to open after SmartGit has been started for the first time and the setup wizard was completed.

smartgit.ui.splashscreen

To hide the splash screen, set this option to false.

smartgit.ui.verboseDate

By default, times from today and yesterday are shown in a short form. To always show the date in the full form, set this option to false.

smartgit.ui.verboseDate.showOnlyTimeForToday

To show only the time (i.e. without “Today”) for times from today, set this option to false.

smartgit.ui.systemtray.linux.enabled

On Linux, the system tray is disabled by default due to problems with Unity desktops. To enable the system tray, set this option to true.

smartgit.ui.toolbar.textRightBesideImage

Defines where the text in toolbar buttons is shown relative to the image.

smartgit.pull.update-submodule-default

By default, for new Git repositories the “Update registered submodules” option is enabled. To disable by default, set this option to false.

smartgit.pull.initialize-submodule-default

By default, for new Git repositories the “And initialize new submodules” option is enabled. To disable by default, set this option to false.

smartgit.pull.defaultToFetchOnly

Set this otpion to true to default the Pull dialog to the Fetch option.

smartgit.pull.defaultToRebase and smartgit.pull.defaultToRememberDefault

Set both options to true to have the Pull dialog always default to “Rebase” and remember this as default. This will be helpful to fix Merge vs. Rebase settings after upgrading to SmartGit 4.

smartgit.annotate.maxToolTipWidth

In the Annotate window, if the mouse hovers over the yellow line detail column, a tooltip with additional information is shown. With this property you can specify a maximum width in pixels for this tooltip. The specified value must lie in the range [10; 1000]. If the value is not specified or out of range, the default value of 400 pixels is used.

smartgit.annotate.maxComboboxMessageLength

In the Annotate window, commit messages are displayed in the combobox in the upper part of the window. This property limits the length of the displayed commit messages, i.e. all commit messages that are longer than this property’s value will be truncated.

smartgit.tree.forceFullSelection

Defines whether the tree views throughout the program should use “full selection” style. “Full selection” means that when an item on a tree is selected, the selection box will fill the entire width of the tree, rather than only the item’s width.

smartgit.ui.useColorsIfSelected

Defines whether tree or table views are allowed to use colors other than the system’s default background and foreground color to display selected items. Depending on the current platform, the usage of additional colors is disabled by default to improve the readability of selected items.

smartgit.pushableCommits.limit

The number of entries in the Outgoing view is limited for performance reasons. Use this option to change the limit.

smartgit.pushableCommits.includeMirrorRemotes

Usually, secondary remotes which have “mirror” set to “true” in the .git/config are not interesting from the perspective of which commits are pushable and hence are ignored. Set this option to true to also have these remotes honored as well.

smartgit.pushableCommits.preserveAuthorDate

Set this option to false to let SmartGit adjust the author dates when rearranging commits.

smartgit.reveal.commandLine

“Reveal in File Manager” by default uses hard-coded, platform-specific file managers (Windows: Explorer, OS X: Finder, Linux: Nautilus). Depending on your file manager, you may use the placeholder ${filePath} or ${fileUri}.

smartgit.repository.makeNameUnique

When creating a new repository, e.g. by dropping a directory onto the Repositories view, SmartGit will use the directory name as name for the repository. This could lead to equally named repositories. When setting this option to true, SmartGit will append number suffixes to ensure that the new repository names don’t collide with already existing ones.

smartgit.forceActive, smartgit.forceActive.dialog and smartgit.forceActive.window

Set one of these options to true to forcibly make new windows/dialogs active.

smartgit.flatLook

Set this option to true to use a lighter color for the border of view controls.

Text editors / File Comparison

smartgit.compare.skipBinaryComparison

To disable the comparison of binary files set this option to true. This may be useful if you usually have large binary files in your repository. When read, these files may slow down certain views, e.g. the “Changes” view.

smartgit.compare.maximumFileSize

By default, the file comparison is disabled for very large files. Use this setting to adjust at what size (in bytes) a file is considered ‘too large’.

smartgit.compare.text.maxLineLength

By default, the file comparison treats files with very long lines as binary files for performance reasons. Use this option to configure the maximum characters per line (default: 10000) which should be treated as text files.

smartgit.compare.innerLine.maximumLineLength and smartgit.compare.innerLine.maximumLongLineCount

The file comparison algorithm consists of two phases. In the first phase, changed lines are detected, and in the second phase, the algorithm will search for changes within corresponding lines. The second phase becomes slower if there are too many long lines, so it is skipped when that happens. These settings allow you to adjust the detection of long lines: The second phase is skipped if the two files contain more than ‘maximumLongLineCount’ lines that are longer than ‘maximumLineLength’ characters in length.

smartgit.textEditors.syntaxHighlighting

Set this option to false to switch syntax highlighting off permanently, regardless of Preferences settings.

Log

smartgit.log.detectRenames

Set to false to disable the detection of renamed files in the Log. In rare cases (large commits with many additions and removals and large files), rename detection may slow down the Log significantly.

smartgit.log.showAllRefsForOnBranches

Set to true line if you want to include all refs for the “On Branches” display in the Log Details view.

smartgit.log.showStashes

By default, the Log shows stashes. To change this, set to false.

smartgit.log.renameDetection.enabled

By default, detection of renamed files is enabled for Log/Blame. To switch rename detection off, set to false.

smartgit.log.branchPriorities

Use this option to change the priorities of Git-Flow branch types in the Log. The priorities are affecting the order in which these branches will be displayed in the Log graph. The order is specified using a comma-separated list of following branch categories where every category must occur exactly once in the list: develop, feature, release, master, hotfix, support.

Example

To layout in the inverse default order, specify:

smartgit.log.branchPriorities=support,hotfix,master,release,feature,develop                       

smartgit.log.commitMessage.shortLimit

SmartGit uses a shortened commit message in various places, e.g. in the commit message column of the Log table. Shortening means the full commit message is cut off after the number of characters specified by this setting.

smartgit.commit.message.useSystemEncoding

By default, commit messages are UTF-8 encoded. To use the default encoding for your platform instead, set to true.

smartgit.log.onlyHead

Set this system property to true if you are having performance- or memory-related problems when showing a File or Sub-Directory Log for a huge repository: by default, SmartGit will run the log for all branches and tags. This is necessary to e.g. properly assign branches/tags to the File or Sub-Directory commits. Also, by default, you will be able to toggle Log roots in the Branches view. When setting this option, SmartGit will only log the current HEAD commit and the Branches view will remain empty.

smartgit.log.graph.layoutActions

When setting this system property to true, you will get additional layouting actions in the context menu of the Log graph. Max. Connector Length specifies the maximum length a continuous connector may have; if the length would exceed this limit, SmartGit will use arrows. Rectilinearity affects how straight connectors will be (degree of “bending”). Once you have a set of parameters which works fine for you, you can skip the system property again. The configuration is stored in the settings.xml configuration file and can be edited there directly, too.

System property “smartgit.log.branchPriorities” to specify order of Git-Flow refs in Log

smartgit.cherryPick.shaPrefix

Git’s cherry-pick command has an -x option that tells Git to automatically append a “cherry picked from commit …” message to the created commits, in order to indicate where the latter came from. SmartGit does not do this by default, but you can enable it by setting this propery to cherry picked from commit.

smartgit.avatar.size

To change the size of the avatar image, change this option.

smartgit.avatar.serverUrl=http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/{0}.jpg?s={1}

If you want to use a different server than gravatar.com to provide the avatars shown in the log, you may configure it in the next line.

• {0} will be replaced by the MD5-hash of the lowercase email
• {1} will be replaced by the avatar size (see above)

smartgit.log.graph.[type].[component]

The colors of the graphical Log-elements can be configured using this property. Valid types are: tag, branchLocal, branchRemote, branchOther and headArrow. Valid components are red, green and blue. Valid values are 0..255. Example: smartgit.log.graph.branch.red=128

Background operations

smartgit.backgroundTasks.idleDelaySeconds 

When SmartGit is idle for a certain amount of time, it will start executing various background tasks. With this option you may set the number of seconds to wait until the ‘idle’ state is reached.

smartgit.repositories.defaultFavoriteLimit

A couple of background commands are working only on repositories which have been Marked as Favorite. If the amount of known repositories (listed in the Repositories view) is equal or below the threshold specified by this property, all repositories will be considered as favorite.

Example

To disable automatic favorite repositories, use:

smartgit.repositories.defaultFavoriteLimit=0

GitHub integration

smartgit.github.pullRequestPageLimit

The number of pull requests to fetch from GitHub is limited by “pages” (one page contains a couple of pull requests). The default page limit is 3.

smartgit.github.commentPageLimit

The number of comments to fetch from GitHub is limited by “pages” (one page contains a couple of comments). The default page limit is 3.

smartgit.github.perPageLimit

The number of objects per page retrieved from the server (default: 100).

BitBucket integration

smartgit.bitbucket.useHttps

Set to true to force SmartGit to connect to repositories using HTTPS, instead of SSH.

JIRA integration

smartgit.jira.resolveOnPush

Set to false to disable optional resolving of JIRA issues on Push.

smartgit.jira.closedStates

Specifies the name of the JIRA states which are considered as closed: SmartGit will only offer to resolve an issue, if the issue is not yet in a closed state and there is at least one transition available for the issue which puts into a closed state.

Example

Default closed states are resolved,closed,done.

Update Check

smartgit.updateCheck

Set to false to disable the check for new versions on a global level which can be convenient e.g. for network installations. To disable the check for an individual installation/user, better do that in the Preferences, section SmartGit Updates.

smartgit.updateCheck.force

Set to true to force the check for new versions more often than the specified interval in the Preferences, section SmartGit Updates.

smartgit.updateCheck.alwaysUpgradeToLatestBuild

Set to true to make SmartGit check for the availability of a new latest build on start up. Latest Builds are the “bleeding edge” builds between subsequent (minor) release builds, like between version 8.0.1 and 8.0.2 or 8.1 preview 3 and 8.1 preview 4. They will contain the latest improvements and bugfixes. Usually we will ask you to manually fetch the latest build using Help|Check for Latest Builds.

License seat tracking

For licenses with a large number of seats, it can be helpful to track the number of monthly used seats. For this purpose, SmartGit can optionally ping a customizable URL which can be used to collect these seat statistics on the server side. A simple implementation on the server-side would just be a virtual host logging to a separate access log file. The resulting log files can be analyzed using e.g. grep on a monthly basis.

smartgit.license.serverPing.url

Enables the license seat tracking feature and specifies the URL (template) which SmartGit will connect to on startup and once per day. The template is basically a URL for which following keywords will be replaced:

• ${email} will be replaced by the user’s email found in the ~/.gitconfig file.
• ${prop.x} will be replaced by the Java system property x. For instance, ${prop.user.name} will be replaced by the Java system property user.name.
• ${env.X} will be replaced by the environment variable X. For instance, ${env.USERID} will be replaced by the environment variable USERID.

smartgit.license.serverPing.method

Specifies the HTTP request method to be used, either GET or HTTP (defaults to GET).

Example

Following configuration will track seats on (including a custom USERID environment variable) at syntevo.com.

smartgit.license.serverPing.method=get
smartgit.license.serverPing.url=http://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/server-ping?email=${email}&name=${prop.user.name}&id=${env.USERID}                  

Debug Properties

log4j.[category]

Use this property to enable debug logging for certain SmartGit modules; [category] has to be replaced by the appropriate module identifier.

Example

To enable debug logging for the Refreshing modules, set following properties:

log4j.smartgit.refresh=DEBUG
log4j.sc.vcs.model.refresh=DEBUG