The configuration files are parsed in this order: /etc/git-buildpackage/gbp.conf system wide configuraton ~/.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 &gbp-buildpackage;, &gbp-import-orig;, &gbp-import-dsc; and &gbp-dch;. [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 --upstream-branch=dfsgfree would read: upstream-branch=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.