If you're familiar with Git, you probably know the git config command, which allows you to set repository options. Example of config variables that may be useful for server-side (bare) repositories are core.logAllRefUpdates, receive.fsckObjects, and various performance-related config variables. (Please see the man page for git-config for details)

Gitolite aims to allow almost all administration remotely, so it would be unreasonable to expect the admin to log on to the server and run the git config command. Therefore, Gitolite allows the admin to specify config settings within the conf file, as follows:

repo foo
    RW+                            =  adam
    config    receive.fsckObjects  =  true