I’ve been using Git for a while now, but only today realized I can have coloured output for diff, grep, branch, show-branch and status, without having to hook in any other external tools (like colordiff, for example).

Here’s my ~/.gitconfig file, which enables colour:

[user]
 name = Nick Boldt
 email = nickboldt (at) gmail.com
 
[giggle]
 main-window-maximized = false
 main-window-geometry = 1324x838+0+24
 main-window-view = HistoryView
 
[core]
 trustctime = false
 branch = auto
 diff = auto
 interactive = auto
 status = auto
 editor = vim
 
[merge]
 tool = vimdiff
 
[receive]
 denyCurrentBranch = warn
 
[branch]
 autosetuprebase = local
 
[color]
 ui = true
 diff = true
 grep = true
 branch = true
 showbranch = true
 status = true
 
[color "diff"]
 plain = normal dim
 meta = yellow dim
 frag = blue bold
 old = magenta
 new = cyan
 whitespace = red reverse
 
[color "status"]
 header = normal dim
 added = yellow
 untracked = magenta
 
[color "branch"]
 current = yellow reverse
 local = yellow
 remote = red

Reference: Git in colour from our JCG partner Nick Boldt at the DivByZero blog.