Ignoring directories in Git repositories on Windows

Question

How can I ignore directories or folders in Git using msysgit on Windows

User · Answer

I had some issues creating a file in Windows nbsp Explorer with a   at the beginning   A workaround was to go into the commandshell and create a new file using  edit

User · Answer

Just in case you need to exclude sub folders you can use the    wildcard to exclude any level of sub directory      build output Debug

User · Answer

In Windows there s an extra catch with slashes  Excluding a single directory in  gitignore with     dir to exclude    will possibly work  but excluding all directories with         causes problems when you have file names with spaces  like my file txt  in your directory  Git Bash escapes these spaces with a backslash  like my  file txt  and Git for Windows doesn t distinguish between   and     To exclude all directories  better use            Two consecutive asterisks signify directory contents

User · Answer

You can create the   gitignore  file with the contents       gitignore   It works for me

User · Answer

I ve had some problems getting Git to pick up the  gitignore file on Windows  The  GIT DIR info exclude file always seems to work though   The downside of this approach  however  is that the files in the  GIT DIR directory are not included in the check-in  and therefore not shared      p s    GIT DIR is usually the hidden folder named  git

User · Answer

I ve had some problems getting Git to pick up the  gitignore file on Windows  The  GIT DIR info exclude file always seems to work though   The downside of this approach  however  is that the files in the  GIT DIR directory are not included in the check-in  and therefore not shared      p s    GIT DIR is usually the hidden folder named  git

User · Answer

It seems that for ignoring files and directories there are two main ways     gitignore   Placing  gitignore file into the root of your repository besides the  git folder  in Windows  make sure you see the true file extension and then make  gitignore   with the point at the end to make an empty file extension   Making the global configuration    gitignore global and running git config --global core excludesfile    gitignore global to add this to your Git configuration   Note  files tracked before can be untracked by running git rm --cached filename Repository exclude - For local files that do not need to be shared  you just add the file pattern or directory to the file  git info exclude  Theses rules are not committed  so they are not seen by other users  More information is here    To make exceptions in the list of ignored files  see this question

User · Answer

On Windows and Mac  if you want to ignore a folder named Flower Data Folder in the current directory  you can do   echo Flower Data Folder  gt  gt   gitignore   If it s a file named data txt   echo data txt  gt  gt   gitignore   If it s a path like  Data passwords txt   echo  Data passwords txt   gt  gt   gitignore

User · Answer

This might be extremely obvious for some  but I did understand this from the other answers  Making a  gitignore file in a directory does nothing by itself   You have to open the  gitignore as a text file and write the files directories you want it to ignore  each on its own line  so cd to the Git repository directory touch  gitignore nano  gitignore  and then write the names of the files and or directories that you want to be ignored and their extensions if relevant  Also   gitignore is a hidden file on some OS  Macs for example  so you need ls -a to see it  not just ls

User · Answer

I had similar issues  I work on a Windows tool chain with a shared repository with Linux guys  and they happily create files with the same  except for case  names in a given folder   The effect is that I can clone the repository and immediately have dozens of  modified  files that  if I checked in  would create havoc   I have Windows set to case sensitive and Git to not ignore case  but it still fails  in the Win32 API calls apparently    If I gitignore the files then I have to remember to not track the  gitignore file   But I found a good answer here   http   archive robwilkerson org 2010 03 02 git-tip-ignore-changes-to-tracked-files index html

User · Answer

Also in your   git info projects directory there is an exclude file that is effectively the same thing as  gitignore  I think   You can add files and directories to ignore in that

User · Answer

Just create  gitignore file in your project folder Then add the name of the folder in it for ex    frontend node modules

User · Answer

It seems that for ignoring files and directories there are two main ways     gitignore   Placing  gitignore file into the root of your repository besides the  git folder  in Windows  make sure you see the true file extension and then make  gitignore   with the point at the end to make an empty file extension   Making the global configuration    gitignore global and running git config --global core excludesfile    gitignore global to add this to your Git configuration   Note  files tracked before can be untracked by running git rm --cached filename Repository exclude - For local files that do not need to be shared  you just add the file pattern or directory to the file  git info exclude  Theses rules are not committed  so they are not seen by other users  More information is here    To make exceptions in the list of ignored files  see this question

User · Answer

I assume the problem is that your working tree is like   a-cache foo a-cache index html b-cache bar b-cache foo b-cache index html  gitignore       with the  gitignore you describe  This will give you git status output like     git status   On branch master   Untracked files       use  git add  lt file gt      to include in what will be committed          gitignore      a-cache       b-cache        if the index html files have not yet been added to the repository    Git sees that there are unignored files in the cache directories  but it only reports the directories   To fix this  make sure that you have added and committed the index html files   git add  cache index html git commit -m  Adding index html files to the cache directories        and your git status will then look like     git status   On branch master   Untracked files       use  git add  lt file gt      to include in what will be committed          gitignore nothing added to commit but untracked files present  use  git add  to track     Obviously you do want to commit  gitignore as well  I was just being lazy with this test case

User · Answer

I had similar issues  I work on a Windows tool chain with a shared repository with Linux guys  and they happily create files with the same  except for case  names in a given folder   The effect is that I can clone the repository and immediately have dozens of  modified  files that  if I checked in  would create havoc   I have Windows set to case sensitive and Git to not ignore case  but it still fails  in the Win32 API calls apparently    If I gitignore the files then I have to remember to not track the  gitignore file   But I found a good answer here   http   archive robwilkerson org 2010 03 02 git-tip-ignore-changes-to-tracked-files index html

User · Answer

I had some issues creating a file in Windows nbsp Explorer with a   at the beginning   A workaround was to go into the commandshell and create a new file using  edit

User · Answer

When everything else fails try editing the file        git info exclude   and adding the directories you want to the end of the file  like this     git ls-files --others --exclude-from  git info exclude   Lines that start with     are comments    For a project mostly in C  the following would be a good set of   exclude patterns  uncomment them if you want to use them        oa       assets  compiled    I added the folders  assets  and  compiled  to the list of files and directories to ignore

User · Answer

To instruct Git to ignore certain files or folders  you have to create  gitignore file   But in Windows nbsp Explorer you have to provide a name for the file  You just cannot create file with just an extension  The trick is that create a empty text file and go to command prompt and change the name of the file to  gitignore   ren  New Text Document txt   gitignore   Now open the file with your favorite text editor and add the file folder names you wish you ignore  You can also use wildcards like this    txt

User · Answer

By default  Windows nbsp Explorer will display  gitignore when in fact the file name is  gitignore txt   Git will not use  gitignore txt  And you can t rename the file to  gitignore  because Windows nbsp Explorer thinks it s a file of type gitignore without a name   Non command line solution   You can rename a file to   gitignore    and it will create   gitignore

User · Answer

You can create the   gitignore  file with the contents       gitignore   It works for me

User · Answer

Just in case you need to exclude sub folders you can use the    wildcard to exclude any level of sub directory      build output Debug

User · Answer

Create a file named  gitignore in your project s directory  Ignore directories by entering the directory name into the file  with a slash appended    dir to ignore    More information is here

User · Answer

If you want to maintain a folder and not the files inside it  just put a   gitignore  file in the folder with     as the content  This file will make Git ignore all content from the repository  But  gitignore will be included in your repository     git add path to folder  gitignore   If you add an empty folder  you receive this message   gitignore is a hidden file   The following paths are ignored by one of your  gitignore files  path to folder  gitignore Use -f if you really want to add them  fatal  no files added   So  use  -f  to force add     git add path to folder  gitignore -f

User · Answer

When everything else fails try editing the file        git info exclude   and adding the directories you want to the end of the file  like this     git ls-files --others --exclude-from  git info exclude   Lines that start with     are comments    For a project mostly in C  the following would be a good set of   exclude patterns  uncomment them if you want to use them        oa       assets  compiled    I added the folders  assets  and  compiled  to the list of files and directories to ignore

User · Answer

If you want to maintain a folder and not the files inside it  just put a   gitignore  file in the folder with     as the content  This file will make Git ignore all content from the repository  But  gitignore will be included in your repository     git add path to folder  gitignore   If you add an empty folder  you receive this message   gitignore is a hidden file   The following paths are ignored by one of your  gitignore files  path to folder  gitignore Use -f if you really want to add them  fatal  no files added   So  use  -f  to force add     git add path to folder  gitignore -f

User · Answer

Create a file named  gitignore in your project s directory  Ignore directories by entering the directory name into the file  with a slash appended    dir to ignore    More information is here

User · Answer

I had some issues creating a file in Windows nbsp Explorer with a   at the beginning   A workaround was to go into the commandshell and create a new file using  edit

User · Answer

Just create  gitignore file in your project folder Then add the name of the folder in it for ex    frontend node modules

User · Answer

On Unix   touch  gitignore   On Windows   echo  gt   gitignore   These commands executed in a terminal will create a  gitignore file in the current location   Then just add information to this  gitignore file  using Notepad   for example  which files or folders should be ignored  Save your changes  That s it     More information   gitignore

User · Answer

Create a file named  gitignore in your project s directory  Ignore directories by entering the directory name into the file  with a slash appended    dir to ignore    More information is here

User · Answer

By default  Windows nbsp Explorer will display  gitignore when in fact the file name is  gitignore txt   Git will not use  gitignore txt  And you can t rename the file to  gitignore  because Windows nbsp Explorer thinks it s a file of type gitignore without a name   Non command line solution   You can rename a file to   gitignore    and it will create   gitignore

User · Answer

To ignore an entire directory in Git  the easiest way is to include a  gitignore file within the target directory which simply contains  quot   quot   An illustrative example  Example System  root       gitignore      dirA          someFile1 txt         someFile2 txt      dirB           gitignore         someFile3 txt         someFile4 txt  Goal  ignore the contents of  dirB   Top Level   root  gitignore   This is where your standard gitignore info goes  e g  a     Untitled docx     some private dirs  etc       dirB     can certainly be placed here  if needed  Ignored Directory   root dirB  gitignore   Git watches for gitignore at every step of the file system so anytime you have ignore specifications to apply then toss it in  generating a new gitignore for that dir  dirB  gitignore then just reads as         and all contents are ignored completely  itself and all files    And it s that simple

User · Answer

I had some issues creating a file in Windows nbsp Explorer with a   at the beginning   A workaround was to go into the commandshell and create a new file using  edit

User · Answer

In Windows there s an extra catch with slashes  Excluding a single directory in  gitignore with     dir to exclude    will possibly work  but excluding all directories with         causes problems when you have file names with spaces  like my file txt  in your directory  Git Bash escapes these spaces with a backslash  like my  file txt  and Git for Windows doesn t distinguish between   and     To exclude all directories  better use            Two consecutive asterisks signify directory contents

User · Answer

On Windows and Mac  if you want to ignore a folder named Flower Data Folder in the current directory  you can do   echo Flower Data Folder  gt  gt   gitignore   If it s a file named data txt   echo data txt  gt  gt   gitignore   If it s a path like  Data passwords txt   echo  Data passwords txt   gt  gt   gitignore

User · Answer

Also in your   git info projects directory there is an exclude file that is effectively the same thing as  gitignore  I think   You can add files and directories to ignore in that

User · Answer

Create a file named  gitignore in your project s directory  Ignore directories by entering the directory name into the file  with a slash appended    dir to ignore    More information is here

User · Answer

I assume the problem is that your working tree is like   a-cache foo a-cache index html b-cache bar b-cache foo b-cache index html  gitignore       with the  gitignore you describe  This will give you git status output like     git status   On branch master   Untracked files       use  git add  lt file gt      to include in what will be committed          gitignore      a-cache       b-cache        if the index html files have not yet been added to the repository    Git sees that there are unignored files in the cache directories  but it only reports the directories   To fix this  make sure that you have added and committed the index html files   git add  cache index html git commit -m  Adding index html files to the cache directories        and your git status will then look like     git status   On branch master   Untracked files       use  git add  lt file gt      to include in what will be committed          gitignore nothing added to commit but untracked files present  use  git add  to track     Obviously you do want to commit  gitignore as well  I was just being lazy with this test case

User · Answer

To instruct Git to ignore certain files or folders  you have to create  gitignore file   But in Windows nbsp Explorer you have to provide a name for the file  You just cannot create file with just an extension  The trick is that create a empty text file and go to command prompt and change the name of the file to  gitignore   ren  New Text Document txt   gitignore   Now open the file with your favorite text editor and add the file folder names you wish you ignore  You can also use wildcards like this    txt

User · Answer

To ignore an entire directory in Git  the easiest way is to include a  gitignore file within the target directory which simply contains  quot   quot   An illustrative example  Example System  root       gitignore      dirA          someFile1 txt         someFile2 txt      dirB           gitignore         someFile3 txt         someFile4 txt  Goal  ignore the contents of  dirB   Top Level   root  gitignore   This is where your standard gitignore info goes  e g  a     Untitled docx     some private dirs  etc       dirB     can certainly be placed here  if needed  Ignored Directory   root dirB  gitignore   Git watches for gitignore at every step of the file system so anytime you have ignore specifications to apply then toss it in  generating a new gitignore for that dir  dirB  gitignore then just reads as         and all contents are ignored completely  itself and all files    And it s that simple

User · Answer

On Unix   touch  gitignore   On Windows   echo  gt   gitignore   These commands executed in a terminal will create a  gitignore file in the current location   Then just add information to this  gitignore file  using Notepad   for example  which files or folders should be ignored  Save your changes  That s it     More information   gitignore

User · Answer

This might be extremely obvious for some  but I did understand this from the other answers  Making a  gitignore file in a directory does nothing by itself   You have to open the  gitignore as a text file and write the files directories you want it to ignore  each on its own line  so cd to the Git repository directory touch  gitignore nano  gitignore  and then write the names of the files and or directories that you want to be ignored and their extensions if relevant  Also   gitignore is a hidden file on some OS  Macs for example  so you need ls -a to see it  not just ls

[windows] Ignoring directories in Git repositories on Windows

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