When I run git branch
on certain machines, I get a simple list of branches using what seems like the result of running the cat
command.
However, especially on machines running ZSH
, it seems like the result of git branch
is resolved with the less
command.
git branch
stdout
(like cat
)git branch
is using less
So the question becomes: is there a way to configure which command is used to render the list of branches on the command line?
I feel like this is similar to setting the default editor (like nano
or vim
) via:
git config --global core.editor "nano"
Despite my best search efforts, I have not found a similar way to configure this for git branch
.
The broader question is: How can one configure which tool a git command uses?
In this case, the config parameter you're looking for is core.pager
. You can set that to the empty string (git config --global core.pager ""
) to disable pagination; this appears to be effectively the same as git config --global core.pager "cat"
. (You can also do this on a repo-by-repo basis, if you want, by omitting the --global
.)
If it's any help, I usually set mine to "less -FX"
, so that it gives me pagination when the output is longer than one terminal screen, but skips pagination on shorter inputs.