[python] Ignore .pyc files in git repository

How can I ignore .pyc files in git?

If I put it in .gitignore it doesn't work. I need them to be untracked and not checked for commits.

If you want to ignore '.pyc' files globally (i.e. if you do not want to add the line to .gitignore file in every git directory), try the following:

$ cat ~/.gitconfig 
[core]
    excludesFile = ~/.gitignore
$ cat ~/.gitignore
**/*.pyc

[Reference]
https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore

• Patterns which a user wants Git to ignore in all situations (e.g., backup or temporary files generated by the user’s editor of choice) generally go into a file specified by core.excludesFile in the user’s ~/.gitconfig.

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

You have probably added them to the repository before putting *.pyc in .gitignore.
First remove them from the repository.

You should add a line with:

*.pyc 

to the .gitignore file in the root folder of your git repository tree right after repository initialization.

As ralphtheninja said, if you forgot to to do it beforehand, if you just add the line to the .gitignore file, all previously committed .pyc files will still be tracked, so you'll need to remove them from the repository.

If you are on a Linux system (or "parents&sons" like a MacOSX), you can quickly do it with just this one line command that you need to execute from the root of the repository:

find . -name "*.pyc" -exec git rm -f "{}" \;

This just means:

starting from the directory i'm currently in, find all files whose name ends with extension .pyc, and pass file name to the command git rm -f

After *.pyc files deletion from git as tracked files, commit this change to the repository, and then you can finally add the *.pyc line to the .gitignore file.

(adapted from http://yuji.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/git-remove-all-pyc/)

i try to use the sentence of a prior post and don't work recursively, then read some help and get this line:

find . -name "*.pyc" -exec git rm -f "{}" \;

p.d. is necessary to add *.pyc in .gitignore file to maintain git clean

echo "*.pyc" >> .gitignore

Enjoy.

Thanks @Enrico for the answer.

Note if you're using virtualenv you will have several more .pyc files within the directory you're currently in, which will be captured by his find command.

For example:

./app.pyc
./lib/python2.7/_weakrefset.pyc
./lib/python2.7/abc.pyc
./lib/python2.7/codecs.pyc
./lib/python2.7/copy_reg.pyc
./lib/python2.7/site-packages/alembic/__init__.pyc
./lib/python2.7/site-packages/alembic/autogenerate/__init__.pyc
./lib/python2.7/site-packages/alembic/autogenerate/api.pyc

I suppose it's harmless to remove all the files, but if you only want to remove the .pyc files in your main directory, then just do

find "*.pyc" -exec git rm -f "{}" \;

This will remove just the app.pyc file from the git repository.