Or you could go to your .gitconfig dotfile and add

  [color]
    ui = true

So I have have this wherever I work as part of my standard dotfile import script.

that's what git config will do if you are not within a git repository.

Another tool that helps a lot with git is tig[1].

[1]: http://jonas.nitro.dk/tig/

    sudo apt-get install tig

(Announcer voice:) "Previously, on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4130494 .

Can we ditch the "longwinded version of the man page" posts?

But this post is actually a "shortwinded version of the man page".

Protip: Do it globally:

git config --global color.ui true