NAME

gitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore

SYNOPSIS

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore, $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, .gitignore

DESCRIPTION

A gitignore file specifies intentionally untracked files thatGit should ignore.Files already tracked by Git are not affected; see the NOTESbelow for details.

Each line in a gitignore file specifies a pattern.When deciding whether to ignore a path, Git normally checksgitignore patterns from multiple sources, with the followingorder of precedence, from highest to lowest (within one level ofprecedence, the last matching pattern decides the outcome):

  • Patterns read from the command line for those commands that supportthem.

  • Patterns read from a .gitignore file in the same directoryas the path, or in any parent directory, with patterns in thehigher level files (up to the toplevel of the work tree) being overriddenby those in lower level files down to the directory containing the file.These patterns match relative to the location of the.gitignore file. A project normally includes such.gitignore files in its repository, containing patterns forfiles generated as part of the project build.

  • Patterns read from $GIT_DIR/info/exclude.

  • Patterns read from the file specified by the configurationvariable core.excludesFile.

Which file to place a pattern in depends on how the pattern is meant tobe used.

  • Patterns which should be version-controlled and distributed toother repositories via clone (i.e., files that all developers will wantto ignore) should go into a .gitignore file.

  • Patterns which arespecific to a particular repository but which do not need to be sharedwith other related repositories (e.g., auxiliary files that live insidethe repository but are specific to one user’s workflow) should go intothe $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file.

  • Patterns which a user wants Git toignore in all situations (e.g., backup or temporary files generated bythe user’s editor of choice) generally go into a file specified bycore.excludesFile in the user’s ~/.gitconfig. Its default value is$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set orempty, $HOME/.config/git/ignore is used instead.

The underlying Git plumbing tools, such asgit ls-files and git read-tree, readgitignore patterns specified by command-line options, or fromfiles specified by command-line options. Higher-level Gittools, such as git status and git add,use patterns from the sources specified above.

PATTERN FORMAT

  • A blank line matches no files, so it can serve as a separatorfor readability.

  • A line starting with # serves as a comment.Put a backslash ("\") in front of the first hash for patternsthat begin with a hash.

  • Trailing spaces are ignored unless they are quoted with backslash("\").

  • An optional prefix "!" which negates the pattern; anymatching file excluded by a previous pattern will becomeincluded again. It is not possible to re-include a file if a parentdirectory of that file is excluded. Git doesn’t list excludeddirectories for performance reasons, so any patterns on containedfiles have no effect, no matter where they are defined.Put a backslash ("\") in front of the first "!" for patternsthat begin with a literal "!", for example, "!important!.txt".

  • The slash / is used as the directory separator. Separators mayoccur at the beginning, middle or end of the .gitignore search pattern.

  • If there is a separator at the beginning or middle (or both) of thepattern, then the pattern is relative to the directory level of theparticular .gitignore file itself. Otherwise the pattern may alsomatch at any level below the .gitignore level.

  • If there is a separator at the end of the pattern then the patternwill only match directories, otherwise the pattern can match bothfiles and directories.

  • For example, a pattern doc/frotz/ matches doc/frotz directory,but not a/doc/frotz directory; however frotz/ matches frotzand a/frotz that is a directory (all paths are relative fromthe .gitignore file).

  • An asterisk "*" matches anything except a slash.The character "?" matches any one character except "/".The range notation, e.g. [a-zA-Z], can be used to matchone of the characters in a range. See fnmatch(3) and theFNM_PATHNAME flag for a more detailed description.

Two consecutive asterisks ("**") in patterns matched againstfull pathname may have special meaning:

  • A leading "" followed by a slash means match in alldirectories. For example, "/foo" matches file or directory"foo" anywhere, the same as pattern "foo". "**/foo/bar"matches file or directory "bar" anywhere that is directlyunder directory "foo".

  • A trailing "/" matches everything inside. For example,"abc/" matches all files inside directory "abc", relativeto the location of the .gitignore file, with infinite depth.

  • A slash followed by two consecutive asterisks then a slashmatches zero or more directories. For example, "a/**/b"matches "a/b", "a/x/b", "a/x/y/b" and so on.

  • Other consecutive asterisks are considered regular asterisks andwill match according to the previous rules.

CONFIGURATION

The optional configuration variable core.excludesFile indicates a path to afile containing patterns of file names to exclude, similar to$GIT_DIR/info/exclude. Patterns in the exclude file are used in addition tothose in $GIT_DIR/info/exclude.

NOTES

The purpose of gitignore files is to ensure that certain filesnot tracked by Git remain untracked.

To stop tracking a file that is currently tracked, usegit rm —cached.

EXAMPLES

  • The pattern hello. matches any file or folderwhose name begins with hello. If one wants to restrictthis only to the directory and not in its subdirectories,one can prepend the pattern with a slash, i.e. /hello.;the pattern now matches hello.txt, hello.c but nota/hello.java.

  • The pattern foo/ will match a directory foo andpaths underneath it, but will not match a regular fileor a symbolic link foo (this is consistent with theway how pathspec works in general in Git)

  • The pattern doc/frotz and /doc/frotz have the same effectin any .gitignore file. In other words, a leading slashis not relevant if there is already a middle slash inthe pattern.

  • The pattern "foo/*", matches "foo/test.json"(a regular file), "foo/bar" (a directory), but it does not match"foo/bar/hello.c" (a regular file), as the asterisk in thepattern does not match "bar/hello.c" which has a slash in it.

  1.     $ git status
  2.     [...]
  3.     # Untracked files:
  4.     [...]
  5.     #       Documentation/foo.html
  6.     #       Documentation/gitignore.html
  7.     #       file.o
  8.     #       lib.a
  9.     #       src/internal.o
  10.     [...]
  11.     $ cat .git/info/exclude
  12.     # ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree.
  13.     *.[oa]
  14.     $ cat Documentation/.gitignore
  15.     # ignore generated html files,
  16.     *.html
  17.     # except foo.html which is maintained by hand
  18.     !foo.html
  19.     $ git status
  20.     [...]
  21.     # Untracked files:
  22.     [...]
  23.     #       Documentation/foo.html
  24.     [...]

Another example:

  1.     $ cat .gitignore
  2.     vmlinux*
  3.     $ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm*
  4.     arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
  5.     $ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore

The second .gitignore prevents Git from ignoringarch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S.

Example to exclude everything except a specific directory foo/bar(note the /* - without the slash, the wildcard would also excludeeverything within foo/bar):

  1.     $ cat .gitignore
  2.     # exclude everything except directory foo/bar
  3.     /*
  4.     !/foo
  5.     /foo/*
  6.     !/foo/bar

SEE ALSO

git-rm[1],gitrepository-layout[5],git-check-ignore[1]

GIT

Part of the git[1] suite