GITIGNORE(5) Git Manual GITIGNORE(5)NAMEgitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore
SYNOPSIS
$GIT_DIR/info/exclude, .gitignore
DESCRIPTION
A gitignore file specifies intentionally untracked files that git
should ignore. Each line in a gitignore file specifies a pattern.
When deciding whether to ignore a path, git normally checks gitignore
patterns from multiple sources, with the following order of precedence,
from highest to lowest (within one level of precedence, the last
matching pattern decides the outcome):
· Patterns read from the command line for those commands that support
them.
· Patterns read from a .gitignore file in the same directory as the
path, or in any parent directory, with patterns in the higher level
files (up to the root) being overridden by those in lower level
files down to the directory containing the file. These patterns
match relative to the location of the .gitignore file. A project
normally includes such .gitignore files in its repository,
containing patterns for files generated as part of the project
build.
· Patterns read from $GIT_DIR/info/exclude.
· Patterns read from the file specified by the configuration variable
core.excludesfile.
Which file to place a pattern in depends on how the pattern is meant
to be used. Patterns which should be version-controlled and
distributed to other repositories via clone (i.e., files that all
developers will want to ignore) should go into a .gitignore file.
Patterns which are specific to a particular repository but which do
not need to be shared with other related repositories (e.g.,
auxiliary files that live inside the repository but are specific to
one user's workflow) should go into the $GIT_DIR/info/exclude file.
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.
The underlying git plumbing tools, such as git-ls-files(1) and
git-read-tree(1), read gitignore patterns specified by command-line
options, or from files specified by command-line options.
Higher-level git tools, such as git-status(1) and git-add(1), use
patterns from the sources specified above.
Patterns have the following format:
· A blank line matches no files, so it can serve as a separator for
readability.
· A line starting with # serves as a comment.
· An optional prefix ! which negates the pattern; any matching file
excluded by a previous pattern will become included again. If a
negated pattern matches, this will override lower precedence
patterns sources.
· If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the purpose of
the following description, but it would only find a match with a
directory. In other words, foo/ will match a directory foo and paths
underneath it, but will not match a regular file or a symbolic link
foo (this is consistent with the way how pathspec works in general
in git).
· If the pattern does not contain a slash /, git treats it as a shell
glob pattern and checks for a match against the pathname without
leading directories.
· Otherwise, git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable for
consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag: wildcards in
the pattern will not match a / in the pathname. For example,
"Documentation/*.html" matches "Documentation/git.html" but not
"Documentation/ppc/ppc.html". A leading slash matches the beginning
of the pathname; for example, "/*.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not
"mozilla-sha1/sha1.c".
An example:
$ git-status
[...]
# Untracked files:
[...]
# Documentation/foo.html
# Documentation/gitignore.html
# file.o
# lib.a
# src/internal.o
[...]
$ cat .git/info/exclude
# ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree.
*.[oa]
$ cat Documentation/.gitignore
# ignore generated html files,
*.html
# except foo.html which is maintained by hand
!foo.html
$ git-status
[...]
# Untracked files:
[...]
# Documentation/foo.html
[...]
Another example:
$ cat .gitignore
vmlinux*
$ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm*
arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
$ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore
The second .gitignore prevents git from ignoring
arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S.
DOCUMENTATION
Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano, Josh Triplett, Frank
Lichtenheld, and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
GIT
Part of the git(7) suite
Git 1.5.5.2 10/21/2008 GITIGNORE(5)
