jj/docs/config.md

Configuration

These are the config settings available to jj/Jujutsu.

The config settings are located at ~/.jjconfig.toml. Less common ways to specify jj config settings are discussed in a later section.

See the TOML site for more on syntax. One thing to remember is that anything under a heading can be dotted e.g. user.name = "YOUR NAME" is equivalent to:

[user]
  name = "YOUR NAME"

Headings only need to be set once in the real config file but Jujutsu favors the dotted style in these instructions, if only because it's easier to write down in an unconfusing way. If you are confident with TOML then use whichever suits you in your config. If you mix the styles, put the dotted keys before the first heading.

The other thing to remember is that the value of a setting (the part to the right of the = sign) should be surrounded in quotes if it's a string. That's probably enough TOML to keep you out of trouble but the syntax guide is very short if you ever need to check.

User settings

user.name = "YOUR NAME" 
user.email = "YOUR_EMAIL@example.com"

Don't forget to change these to your own details!

UI settings

Colorizing output

Possible values are always, never and auto (default: auto). auto will use color only when writing to a terminal.

This setting overrides the NO_COLOR environment variable (if set).

ui.color = "never" # Turn off color

Relative timestamps

ui.relative-timestamps = true

False by default, but setting to true will change timestamps to be rendered as x days/hours/seconds ago instead of being rendered as a full timestamp.

Pager

The default pager is can be set via ui.pager or the PAGER environment variable. The priority is as follows (environment variables are marked with a $):

ui.pager > $PAGER

less is the default pager in the absence of any other setting.

Editor

The default editor is set via ui.editor, though there are several places to set it. The priority is as follows (environment variables are marked with a $):

$JJ_EDITOR > ui.editor > $VISUAL > $EDITOR

Pico is the default editor in the absence of any other setting but you could set it explicitly too.

ui.editor = "pico"

To use NeoVim instead:

ui.editor = "nvim"

For GUI editors you possibly need to use a -w or --wait. Some examples:

ui.editor = "code -w"       # VS Code
ui.editor = "bbedit -w"     # BBEdit
ui.editor = "subl -n -w"    # Sublime Text
ui.editor = "mate -w"       # TextMate
ui.editor = "'C:/Program Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe' -multiInst -notabbar -nosession -noPlugin" # Notepad++
ui.editor = "idea --temp-project --wait"   #IntelliJ

Obviously, you would only set one line, don't copy them all in!

Editing diffs

The ui.diff-editor setting affects the tool used for editing diffs (e.g. jj split, jj amend -i). The default is meld. The left and right directories to diff are passed as the first and second argument respectively.

For example:

ui.diff-editor = "vimdiff"

When kdiff3 is set via:

ui.diff-editor = "kdiff3"

Custom arguments can be added, and will be inserted before the paths to diff:

# merge-tools.kdiff3.program = "kdiff3"      # Defaults to the name of the tool if not specified
merge-tools.kdiff3.edit-args = ["--merge", "--cs", "CreateBakFiles=0"]

Alternative ways to specify configuration settings

Instead of ~/.jjconfig.toml, the config settings can be located at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/jj/config.toml as per the XDG specification. It is an error for both of these files to exist.

The location of the jj config file can also be overriden with the JJ_CONFIG environment variable. If it is not empty, it should contain the path to a TOML file that will be used instead of any configuration file in the default locations. For example,

env JJ_CONFIG=/dev/null jj log       # Ignores any settings specified in the config file.

You can use one or more --config-toml options on the command line to specify additional configuration settings. This overrides settings defined in config files or environment variables. For example,

jj --config-toml='ui.color="always"' --config-toml='ui.difftool="kdiff3"' split

Config specified this way must be valid TOML. In paritcular, string values must be surrounded by quotes. To pass these quotes to jj, most shells require surrounding those quotes with single quotes as shown above.

In sh-compatible shells, --config-toml can be used to merge entire TOML files with the config specified in .jjconfig.toml:

jj --config-toml="$(cat extra-config.toml)" log