[windows] Ignoring directories in Git repositories on Windows

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

Just in case you need to exclude sub folders you can use the ** wildcard to exclude any level of sub directory.

**/build/output/Debug/

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

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 <file>..." 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 <file>..." 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.)

I had some issues creating a file in Windows Explorer with a . at the beginning.

A workaround was to go into the commandshell and create a new file using "edit".

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.

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 <file>..." 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 <file>..." 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.)

To ignore an entire directory in Git, the easiest way is to include a .gitignore file within the target directory which simply contains "*".

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 :)

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

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.

By default, Windows 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 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"

On Unix:

touch .gitignore

On Windows:

echo > .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

To instruct Git to ignore certain files or folders, you have to create .gitignore file.

But in Windows 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.

Just create .gitignore file in your project folder Then add the name of the folder in it for ex:

frontend/node_modules

To instruct Git to ignore certain files or folders, you have to create .gitignore file.

But in Windows 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.

By default, Windows 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 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"

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.

You can create the ".gitignore" file with the contents:

*
!.gitignore

It works for me.

It seems that for ignoring files and directories there are two main ways:

1. .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

2. 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.

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.

Just in case you need to exclude sub folders you can use the ** wildcard to exclude any level of sub directory.

**/build/output/Debug/

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

I had some issues creating a file in Windows Explorer with a . at the beginning.

A workaround was to go into the commandshell and create a new file using "edit".

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.

You can create the ".gitignore" file with the contents:

*
!.gitignore

It works for me.

Just create .gitignore file in your project folder Then add the name of the folder in it for ex:

frontend/node_modules

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

I had some issues creating a file in Windows Explorer with a . at the beginning.

A workaround was to go into the commandshell and create a new file using "edit".

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

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.

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 >> .gitignore

If it's a file named data.txt:

echo data.txt >> .gitignore

If it's a path like "Data/passwords.txt"

echo "Data/passwords.txt" >> .gitignore. 

To ignore an entire directory in Git, the easiest way is to include a .gitignore file within the target directory which simply contains "*".

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 :)

I had some issues creating a file in Windows Explorer with a . at the beginning.

A workaround was to go into the commandshell and create a new file using "edit".

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 >> .gitignore

If it's a file named data.txt:

echo data.txt >> .gitignore

If it's a path like "Data/passwords.txt"

echo "Data/passwords.txt" >> .gitignore. 

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.

On Unix:

touch .gitignore

On Windows:

echo > .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

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

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.

It seems that for ignoring files and directories there are two main ways:

1. .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

2. 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.