Apply gitignore on an existing repository already tracking large number of files

Question

I have an existing Visual Studio project in my repository  I recently added a  gitignore file under my project and I assume that tells Git to ignore the files listed in the file    My problem is that all those files are already being tracked and as far as I know Git will not ignore a file that was already tracked before a rule was added to this file to ignore it   It was suggested to use  git rm --cached and manually un-track them but that s going to take me forever to go through them one by one    I thought about deleting the repository and recreating it again but this time with  gitignore file present  but there must be a better way to do this

User · Accepted Answer

This answer solved my problem   First of all  commit all pending changes   Then run this command   git rm -r --cached     This removes everything from the index  then just run   git add     Commit it   git commit -m   gitignore is now working

User · Answer

As specified here You can update the index   git update-index --assume-unchanged  path to file   By doing this  the files will not show up in git status or git diff   To begin tracking the files again you can run   git update-index --no-assume-unchanged  path to file

User · Answer

Here is one way to    untrack    any files that are would otherwise be ignored under the current set of exclude patterns    GIT INDEX FILE some-non-existent-file   git ls-files --exclude-standard --others --directory --ignored -z    xargs -0 git rm --cached -r --ignore-unmatch --   This leaves the files in your working directory but removes them from the index   The trick used here is to provide a non-existent index file to git ls-files so that it thinks there are no tracked files  The shell code above asks for all the files that would be ignored if the index were empty and then removes them from the actual index with git rm   After the files have been    untracked     use git status to verify that nothing important was removed  if so adjust your exclude patterns and use git reset -- path to restore the removed index entry   Then make a new commit that leaves out the    crud      The    crud    will still be in any old commits  You can use git filter-branch to produce clean versions of the old commits if you really need a clean history  n b  using git filter-branch will    rewrite history     so it should not be undertaken lightly if you have any collaborators that have pulled any of your historical commits after the    crud    was first introduced

User · Answer

Use git clean Get help on this running  git clean -h   If you want to see what would happen first  make sure to pass the -n switch for a dry run   git clean -xn   To remove gitingnored garbage  git clean -xdf   Careful  You may be ignoring local config files like database yml which would also be removed  Use at your own risk   Then  git add   git commit -m   gitignore is now working  git push

User · Answer

Create a  gitignore file  so to do that  you just create any blank  txt file  Then you have to change its name writing the following line on the cmd  where git txt is the name of the file you ve just created    rename git txt  gitignore  Then you can open the file and write all the untracked files you want to ignore for good  For example  mine looks like this         OS junk files  Tt humbs db   DS Store   Visual Studio files    Oo bj   user   aps   pch   vspscc   vssscc   i c   p c   ncb   suo   tlb   tlh   bak    Cc ache   ilk   log   lib   sbr   sdf   pyc   xml ipch  obj   Bb in  Dd ebug    Rr elease   Ankh NoLoad   Tooling  ReSharper     resharper  Tt est Rr esult    Project files  Bb uild    Subversion files  svn    Office Temp Files       There s a whole collection of useful  gitignore files by GitHub   Once you have this  you need to add it to your git repository just like any other file  only it has to be in the root of the repository  Then in your terminal you have to write the following line   git config --global core excludesfile    gitignore global   From oficial doc      You can also create a global  gitignore file  which is a list of rules   for ignoring files in every Git repository on your computer  For   example  you might create the file at    gitignore global and add some   rules to it       Open Terminal  Run the following command in your terminal  git config   --global core excludesfile    gitignore global   If the respository already exists then you have to run these commands   git rm -r --cached   git add   git commit -m   gitignore is now working    If the step 2 doesn  t work then you should write the hole route of the files that you would like to add

User · Answer

If you added your  gitignore too late  git will continue to track already commited files regardless  To fix this  you can always remove all cached instances of the unwanted files   First  to check what files are you actually tracking  you can run   git ls-tree --name-only --full-tree -r HEAD  Let say that you found unwanted files in a directory like cache  so  it s safer to target that directory instead of all  of your files   So instead of   git rm -r --cached    It s safer to target the unwanted file or directory   git rm -r --cached cache   Then proceed to add all changes     git add    and commit     git commit -m   gitignore is now working   Reference  https   amyetheredge com code 13 html

User · Answer

I think this is an easy way for adding a  gitignore file to an existing repository   Prerequisite   You need a browser to access your github account   Steps   Create a new file in your required  existing  project and name it  gitignore  You will a get suggestive prompt for  gitignore templates as soon as you name the file as  gitignore  Either use these templates or use gitignore io to generate the content of your gitignore file  Commit the changes  Now clone this repository    Have fun

[git] Apply .gitignore on an existing repository already tracking large number of files

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