How can I stop gitignore from appearing in the list of untracked files

Question

I just did a git init on the root of my new project   Then I created a  gitignore file   Now  when I type git status   gitignore file appears in the list of untracked files  Why is that

User · Answer

I think that there are situations where ignoring the .gitignore is very useful. For instance, when you have multiple teams or a large team working on the same codebase. In that case, you need to have certain conventions, one of those convention is regarding what is ignored at the git repo. It is usually about ignoring files and directories created by IDE or OS, some generated logs, etc.

However, there is a force which is tending to introduce non-conventional changes to .gitignore file. The .gitignore file can be further changed by irresponsible person, by mistake, by a tool that is used, or in some other case.

To have a counter force to this, we can do as followed:

The initial .gitignore should reflect convention in team(s),
After it is pushed, the .gitignore should be secured by adding .gitignore entry and push that change again.The .gitignore file is "sealed" in this way.

The "sealed" .gitignore file can be changed, just locally, without propagating that changers to other members of team(s). However, if a change is widely agreed throughout the whole team(s) than it is possible to "unseal" it, change it and than "seal" it again. That can't be done by mistake, only intentionally.

Sadly, you cannot be 100% protected from the stupidity, but this way you have done everything you can to prevent stupid things to happen.

If you have relatively small team with very good professionals, than this wouldn't be important, but even those guys would appreciate to have one thing less to worry about.

Using .git/info/exclude is cool when you cannot do anything about infrastructure settings, just covering your own a** not to make a mistake.

From a standing point of what is right and what is wrong I am voting for having .gitignore entry inside .gitignore file, giving everybody the freedom to do locally whatever they want, but not invading others.

User · Answer

First of all  as many others already said  your  gitignore should be tracked by Git  and should therefore not be ignored   Let me explain why   TL DR  commit the  gitignore file  and use a global  gitignore to ignore files that are created by your IDE or operating system  Git is  as you probably already know  a distributed version control system  This means that it allows you to switch back and forth between different versions  even if development has diverged into different branches  and it also allows multiple developers to work on the same project  Although tracking your  gitignore also has benefits when you switch between snapshots  the most important reason for committing it is that you ll want to share the file with other developers who are working on the same project  By committing the file into Git  other contributers will automatically get the  gitignore file when they clone the repository  so they won t have to worry about accidentally committing a file that shouldn t be committed  such as log files  cache directories  database credentials  etc    And if at some point the project s  gitignore is updated  they can simply pull in those changes instead of having to edit the file manually  Of course  there will be some files and folders that you ll want to ignore  but that are specific for you  and don t apply to other developers  However  those should not be in the project s  gitignore  There are two other places where you can ignore files and folders   Files and folders that are created by your operating system or IDE should be placed in a global  gitignore  The benefit is that this  gitignore is applied to all repositories on your computer  so you don t have to repeat this for every repository  And it s not shared with other developers  since they might be using a different operating system and or IDE  Files that don t belong in the project s  gitignore  nor in the global  gitignore  can be ignored using explicit repository excludes in your project directory  git info exclude  This file will not be shared with other developers  and is specific for that single repository

User · Answer

I found that the best place to set up an ignore to the pesky  DS Store files is in the  git info exclude file   IntelliJ seems to do this automatically when you set up a git repository in it

User · Answer

This seems to only work for your current directory to get Git to ignore all files from the repository    update this file   git info exclude    with your wild card or filename    pyc  swp

User · Answer

If you ve already checked in  gitignore and you want to ignore modifications to it  check out this answer      Try using this command   git update-index --assume-unchanged FILENAME TO IGNORE       To reverse it  if you ever want to commit changes to it   use   git update-index --no-assume-unchanged       UPDATE       Here s how to list  assume unchanged  files under current   directory   git ls-files -v   grep -E    a-z         As the -v option will use lowercase letters for  assume unchanged    files

User · Answer

You could actually put a line  gitignore into your  gitignore file  This would cause the  gitignore file to be ignored by git  I do not actually think this is a good idea  I think the ignore file should be version controlled and tracked  I m just putting this out there for completeness

User · Answer

Watch out for the following  problem  Sometimes you want to add directories but no files within those directories  The simple solution is to create a  gitignore with the following content       This seams to work fine until you realize that the directory was not added  as expected to your repository  The reason for that is that the  gitignore will also be ignored  and thereby the directory is empty  Thus  you should do something like this       gitignore

User · Answer

Navigate to the base directory of your git repo and execute the following command   echo         gt  gt   gitignore   All dot files will be ignored  including that pesky  DS Store if you re on a mac

User · Answer

The idea is to put files that are specific to your project into the  gitignore file and  as already mentioned  add it to the repository  For example  pyc and  o files  logs that the testsuite creates  some fixtures etc   For files that your own setup creates but which will not necessarily appear for every user  like  swp files if you use vim  hidden ecplise directories and the like   you should use  git info exclude  as already mentioned

User · Answer

You can also have a global user git  gitignore file that will apply automatically to all your repos  This is useful for IDE and editor files  e g  swp and    files for Vim   Change directory locations to suit your OS    Add to your    gitconfig file    core  excludesfile    home username  gitignore  Create a    gitignore file with file patterns to be ignored  Save your dot files in another repo so you have a backup  optional     Any time you copy  init or clone a repo  your global gitignore file will be used as well

User · Answer

It is quite possible that an end user wants to have Git ignore the   gitignore  file simply because the IDE specific folders created by Eclipse are probably not the same as NetBeans or another IDE  So to keep the source code IDE antagonistic it makes life easy to have a custom git ignore that isn t shared with the entire team as individual developers might be using different IDE s

User · Answer

The  gitignore file should be in your repository  so it should indeed be added and committed in  as git status suggests  It has to be a part of the repository tree  so that changes to it can be merged and so on   So  add it to your repository  it should not be gitignored   If you really want you can add  gitignore to the  gitignore file if you don t want it to be committed  However  in that case it s probably better to add the ignores to  git info exclude  a special checkout-local file that works just like  gitignore but does not show up in  git status  since it s in the  git folder   See also https   help github com articles ignoring-files

User · Answer

Just incase someone else has the same pain we had  We wanted to exclude a file that had already been committed   This post was way more useful  working with  git info exclude too late  Specifically what you need to ignore a file is actually use the command git remove See git rm  http   www kernel org pub software scm git docs git-rm html   you test it by going   git rm --dry-run   log  if you say wanted to exclude all the log files   this will output what would be excluded if you ran it   then  you run it by going  git rm   log  or whatever filename path   expression you want to   Then add a   log line to your  gitignore file

User · Answer

If you want to store the list of ignored files outside of your Git tree  you can use the  git info exclude file  It is applied only to your checkout of the repo

User · Answer

Of course the  gitignore file is showing up on the status  because it s untracked  and git sees it as a tasty new file to eat   Since  gitignore is an untracked file however  it is a candidate to be ignored by git when you put it in  gitignore   So  the answer is simple  just add the line    gitignore   Ignore the hand that feeds    to your  gitignore file   And  contrary to August s response  I should say that it s not that the  gitignore file should be in your repository   It just happens that it can be  which is often convenient   And it s probably true that this is the reason  gitignore was created as an alternative to  git info exclude  which doesn t have the option to be tracked by the repository   At any rate  how you use your  gitignore file is totally up to you   For reference  check out the gitignore 5  manpage on kernel org

User · Answer

gitignore is about ignoring other files   git is about files so this is about ignoring files   However as git works off files this file needs to be there as the mechanism to list the other file names   If it were called  the list of ignored files it might be a little more obvious   An analogy is a list of to-do items that you do NOT want to do   Unless you list them somewhere is some sort of  to-do  list you won t know about them

User · Answer

If someone has already added a  gitignore to your repo  but you want to make some changes to it and have those changes ignored do the following   git update-index --assume-unchanged  gitignore  Source

User · Answer

In my case  I want to exclude an existing file  Only modifying  gitignore not work  I followed these steps   git rm --cached dirToFile file php vim  gitignore git commit -a   In this way  I cleaned from cache the file that I wanted to exclude and after I added it to  gitignore

User · Answer

After you add the  gitignore file and commit it  it will no longer show up in the  untracked files  list   git add  gitignore git commit -m  add  gitignore file  git status

[git] How can I stop .gitignore from appearing in the list of untracked files?

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