I have recently begun to use the 'ag' command instead of 'ack'.
Ag is much faster, but does not seem to have a file (such as .ackrc) where one could add configuration options.
For example, I always want a pager to be used, and I don't want to have to always type in:
ag --pager "less -R"
How about putting the following in your command line configuration file (such as .bashrc or .zshrc)?