git ignore vim temporary files

Question

What is the correct way to make git ignore temporary files produced by vim in all directories  either globally across the system or locally for a single project

User · Answer

sure   just have to create a   gitignore  on the home directory of your project and have to contain    swp   that s it  in one command   project-home-directory  echo    swp   gt  gt   gitignore

User · Answer

VIM  Temperory files       VIM  Swap-files       s a-w  a-z      s a-w  a-z     VIM  Commands  cs   ctags tags cscope      VIM session Session vim    VIM  netrw vim  Network oriented reading  writing  browsing  eg  ftp scp    netrwhist      The name of the swap file is normally the same as the file you are editing    with the extension   swp           On Unix  a     is prepended to swap file names in the same directory as the   edited file   This avoids that the swap file shows up in a   directory   listing    On MS-DOS machines and when the  shortname  option is on  any     in the   original file name is replaced with        If this file already exists  e g   when you are recovering from a crash  a   warning is given and another extension is used    swo       swn   etc    An existing file will never be overwritten    The swap file is deleted as soon as Vim stops editing the file          The replacement of     with     is done to avoid problems with          MS-DOS compatible filesystems  e g   crossdos  multidos      http   vimdoc sourceforge net htmldoc recover html  http   www vim org scripts script php script id 1075

User · Answer

This is something that should only be done on a per-user basis  not per-repository   If Joe uses emacs  he will want to have emacs backup files ignored  but Betty  who uses vi  will want vi backup files ignored  in many cases  they are similar  but there are about 24 893 common editors in existence and it is pretty ridiculous to try to ignore all of the various backup extensions      In other words  do not put anything in  gitignore or in core excludes in  GIT DIR config   Put the info in  HOME  gitconfig instead  as nunopolonia suggests with --global    Note that  global  means per-user  not per-system     If you want configuration across the system for all users  which you don t   you ll need a different mechanism    Possibly with templates setup prior to initialization of the repository

User · Answer

If You are using source control  vim temp files are quite useless  So You might want to configure vim not to create them     Just edit Your    vimrc and add these lines   set nobackup set noswapfile

User · Answer

Here is the actual VIM code that generates the swap file extensions          Change the   swp  extension to find another file that can be used      First decrement the last char    swo     swn   etc      If that still isn t enough decrement the last but one char    svz      Can happen when editing many  No Name  buffers       if  fname n - 1      a               s a              if  fname n - 2      a           saa   tried enough  give up                     EMSG    E326  Too many swap files found             vim free fname           fname   NULL          break              --fname n - 2                    svz     suz   etc         fname n - 1     z    1    --fname n - 1                        swo     swn   etc       This will generate swap files of the format         s a-v  a-z        sw a-p      s a-v  a-z      sw a-p    Which is pretty much what is included in github s own gitignore file for VIM   As others have correctly noted  this  gitignore will also ignore  svg image files and  swf adobe flash files

User · Answer

Vim temporary files end with   so you can add to the file  gitignore the line       Vim also creates swap files that have the swp and swo extensions  to remove those use the lines     swp   swo   This will ignore all the vim temporary files in a single project  If you want to do it globally  you can create a  gitignore file in your home  you can give it other name or location   and use the following command   git config --global core excludesfile    gitignore   Then you just need to add the files you want to ignore to that file

User · Answer

Quit vim before  git commit    to make vim use other folders for backup files    tmp for example    set bdir-   set bdir   tmp   to make vim stop using current folder for  swp files   set dir-   set dir   tmp   Use -      would be generally good  because vim has other defaults for bdir  dir  we don t want to clear all   Check vim help for more about bdir  dir    h bdir  h dir

User · Answer

I would also recommend to think to ignore files like      swp    swo   as you may have files that end with  swp

User · Answer

In myy case the temporary files are already commited by previous actions  so modifying  gitignore will not affect those commited files     you have to git rm files to be ignored --cache first  then commit  then DONE

User · Answer

This works on a Mac as noted by Alex Moore-Niemi   set backupdir  TMPDIR   set directory  TMPDIR     Make sure to use TMPDIR and not TEMPDIR

User · Answer

I found this will have git ignore temporary files created by vim         s a-w  a-z      s a-w  a-z    un  Session vim  netrwhist      It can also be viewed here

User · Answer

Alternatively you can configure vim to save the swapfiles to a separate location  e g  by adding lines similar to the following to your  vimrc file   set backupdir  TEMP   set directory  TEMP     See this vim tip for more info

[git] git ignore vim temporary files

Examples related to git

Examples related to vim

Examples related to ignore

Examples related to temporary-files