Configuration Files The configuration files are parsed in this order: /etc/git-buildpackage/gbp.conf system wide configuration ~/.gbp.conf per user configuration .gbp.conf per repository/branch configuration (deprecated) debian/gbp.conf per repository/branch configuration .git/gbp.conf per (local) repository configuration All have the same format. They consist of several sections, all of them are optional: [DEFAULT] Options in this section apply to all &gbp; commands. [buildpackage] Options in this section apply to &gbp-buildpackage; only and override options from the [DEFAULT] section. [import-orig] Options in this section apply to &gbp-import-orig; only and override options from the [DEFAULT] section. [import-dsc] Options in this section apply to &gbp-import-dsc; only and override options from the [DEFAULT] section. [dch] Options in this section apply to &gbp-dch; only and override options from the [DEFAULT] section. ... Same for the other &gbp; commands The actual options in these sections are the command line options without the '--' prefix. So dfsgfree would read: =dfsgfree in the config file. In the special case of &gbp-buildpackage;, the stripped prefix is not '--' but '--git-'. Here's a more complete example: [DEFAULT] # the default build command builder=debuild -i\.git -I.git # the default branch for upstream sources upstream-branch=upstream # the default branch for the debian patch debian-branch=master [buildpackage] upstream-branch=dfsgclean # Sign tags with GPG: sign-tags = True # Keyid to sign tags with #keyid = 0xdeadbeef [import-orig] upstream-branch=notdfsgclean [import-dsc] upstream-branch=notdfsgclean [dch] git-log=--no-merges For more details, see the manual page. Overriding Parsing Order The environment variable GBP_CONF_FILES can be used to override the order in which configuration files are parsed. The following example parses two configuration files in the users home directory (~/.gbp.conf and ~/.gbp.late.conf) and in the debian directory (debian/gbp.conf). The file are parsed from left to right. Since ~/.gbp.late.conf is at the very end of the list it can be used to override configuration entries shipped by the package. This can be useful if packages set e.g. or and you prefer different locations: $ cat <<EOF >~/.gbp.late.conf [DEFAULT] export-dir = ../build-area tarball-dir = ../tarballs EOF $ export GBP_CONF_FILES=~/.gbp.conf:debian/gbp.conf:~/.gbp.late.conf $ cd <mypkg> $ gbp config buildpackage.export-dir ../build-area If you want all configuration files to be skipped, set GBP_CONF_FILES to a non existing location. This way only default values and options from the command line will be used: $ export GBP_CONFI_FILES=/does/not/exist $ gbp config buildpackage.debian-branch master