NAME
gitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignoreSYNOPSIS
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore, $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, .gitignoreDESCRIPTION
A gitignore file specifies intentionally untracked files that Git should ignore. Files already tracked by Git are not affected; see the NOTES below for details.•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 (up to the
top-level of the working tree), with patterns in the higher level files 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.
•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. Its default
value is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or
empty, $HOME/.config/git/ignore is used instead.
PATTERN FORMAT
•A blank line matches no files, so it
can serve as a separator for readability.
•A line starting with # serves as a
comment. Put a backslash (" \") in front of the first hash
for patterns that begin with a hash.
•Trailing spaces are ignored unless
they are quoted with backslash (" \").
•An optional prefix
"!" which negates the pattern; any matching file excluded by
a previous pattern will become included again. It is not possible to
re-include a file if a parent directory of that file is excluded. Git
doesn’t list excluded directories for performance reasons, so any
patterns on contained files have no effect, no matter where they are defined.
Put a backslash (" \") in front of the first
"!" for patterns that begin with a literal "
!", for example, " \!important!.txt".
•The slash / is used as the
directory separator. Separators may occur at the beginning, middle or end of
the .gitignore search pattern.
•If there is a separator at the
beginning or middle (or both) of the pattern, then the pattern is relative to
the directory level of the particular .gitignore file itself. Otherwise
the pattern may also match at any level below the .gitignore
level.
•If there is a separator at the end of
the pattern then the pattern will only match directories, otherwise the
pattern can match both files and directories.
•For example, a pattern
doc/frotz/ matches doc/frotz directory, but not
a/doc/frotz directory; however frotz/ matches frotz and
a/frotz that is a directory (all paths are relative from the
.gitignore file).
•An asterisk "*"
matches anything except a slash. The character " ?" matches
any one character except " /". The range notation, e.g.
[a-zA-Z], can be used to match one of the characters in a range. See
fnmatch(3) and the FNM_PATHNAME flag for a more detailed description.
•A leading "**"
followed by a slash means match in all directories. For example, "
**/foo" matches file or directory " foo"
anywhere, the same as pattern " foo".
"**/foo/bar" matches file or directory "
bar" anywhere that is directly under directory "
foo".
•A trailing "/**"
matches everything inside. For example, " abc/**" matches all
files inside directory " abc", relative to the location of
the .gitignore file, with infinite depth.
•A slash followed by two consecutive
asterisks then a slash matches zero or more directories. For example, "
a/**/b" matches "a/b", "a/x/b",
" a/x/y/b" and so on.
•Other consecutive asterisks are
considered regular asterisks and will match according to the previous
rules.
CONFIGURATION
The optional configuration variable core.excludesFile indicates a path to a file containing patterns of file names to exclude, similar to $GIT_DIR/info/exclude. Patterns in the exclude file are used in addition to those in $GIT_DIR/info/exclude.NOTES
The purpose of gitignore files is to ensure that certain files not tracked by Git remain untracked.EXAMPLES
•The pattern hello.* matches any
file or directory whose name begins with hello.. If one wants to
restrict this only to the directory and not in its subdirectories, one can
prepend the pattern with a slash, i.e. /hello.*; the pattern now
matches hello.txt, hello.c but not a/hello.java.
•The pattern 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)
•The pattern doc/frotz and
/doc/frotz have the same effect in any .gitignore file. In other
words, a leading slash is not relevant if there is already a middle slash in
the pattern.
•The pattern "foo/*", matches
"foo/test.json" (a regular file), "foo/bar" (a directory),
but it does not match "foo/bar/hello.c" (a regular file), as the
asterisk in the pattern does not match "bar/hello.c" which has a
slash in it.
$ 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 [...]
$ cat .gitignore vmlinux* $ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm* arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S $ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore
$ cat .gitignore # exclude everything except directory foo/bar /* !/foo /foo/* !/foo/bar
SEE ALSO
git-rm(1), gitrepository-layout(5), git-check-ignore(1)GIT
Part of the git(1) suite02/28/2023 | Git 2.39.2 |