I don't see the file in explored, even with the "show hidden objects" setting.
On the other hand git shows it as untracked files and I found no way to remove it.
Any ideas?
git status
On branch devSQC
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/devSQC'.
Untracked files:
(use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
pathto/~$crazy file.xlsx
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
ls pathto/
'~$crazy file.xlsx'
git rm -f 'pathto/~$crazy file.xlsx'
fatal: pathspec 'pathto/~$crazy file.xlsx' did not match any files
I know those are windows files for recovery, but windows does not allow to do anything either and I hope git bash is better ;-)
See e.g. here but I hope, I don't need to install additional tools...
I just realized, it is simple to remove those files within bash (of course, it has nothing to do with git...)
cd path2/
rm -f '~$FHS_Noten STAT_FS2019_TZ17_Noten_Vorlage.xlsx'
git-rm does not work because it
Remove files from the working tree and from the index
so it is not a function to delete files.
In a folder in my project I am trying "git add images" (images is a folder). Nothing happens. I also went into the images and ran "git add ." and nothing happened.
In both cases "git status" tells me my branch is up to date.
What do I need to do?
First, if images/ is an empty folder, Git would not add it: it adds only files.
Adding just a folder requires indeed adding a file, like a .keep, or a .gitignore if you don't want to track its content.
Second, if images/ is a folder with files, and those files are not added, pick one of those untracked file (that you cannot add), and type:
git check-ignore -v -- images/afile
That way, you won't have to check all .gitignore files: Git will do that for you, and print any .gitignore path (and the rule in it) which is responsible for images/ content (the files) to be ignored (you would need to do git add -f to force them to be added)
my .gitignore file
ext/templates_c
my git status call
D:\Development\online\site\newsite>git status
# On branch master
# Changes not staged for commit:
# (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
# (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
# modified: ext/pages/config.php
# modified: ext/templates_c/60a4cccd667e8b1e3a702b2a2c9108f056837adc.file.pages.html.php
# modified: ext/templates_c/fd38ffaa13c6f4c29772bec22cad5aebb1d4d7f6.file.form.html.php
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
Have I done something really stupid?
Why isnt git ignoring the files in ext/templates_c
The fact that git status shows files in your "ignored" subdirectory as "modified" means that those files are already being tracked by git. Because of this, simply adding the directory to .gitignore is not sufficient to get those files ignored (although new files in that directory will properly be ignored). You need to do a git rm --cached <file> for each of the files in that directory that are currently tracked.
As I was writing this I discovered that
ext/templates_c
does not work but
ext\templates_c
does.
So you need to use windows slashes.
I have follwoing dir structure
and here is content of .gitignore
conf.php
The problem is, when I change contents conf.php and try to commit something, GIT detects conf.php as changed file again. In fact it must be ignored.
I have commited it once. I want to ignore it from now. What am I missing?
Update
I tried following:
Added conf.php to gitignore
removed it from cache git rm --cached conf.php.
But now, when I rescan project, it wants to stage conf.php as removed.
Its not what I want.
I want to keep it on remote repo and ignore future (from now) changes in local repo.
Git will not ignore tracked files
Git will not ignore changes to already-committed files.
What Git ignore is for
Git ignore, ignores noise that's in your repo, for example:
$ git init
$ mkdir tmp
$ touch tmp/file1
$ touch tmp/file2
$ git status
# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
# Untracked files:
# (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
# tmp/
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
If the .gitignore file is modified to ignore the tmp directory:
$ echo "tmp" > .gitignore
$ git status
# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
# 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)
the tmp dir contents are nolonger listed - but the .gitignore file IS listed (because I just created it and the file itself is not ignored).
Committing that, there are no changes listed:
$ git add .gitignore
$ git commit -v -m "addding git ignore file"
[master (root-commit) d7af571] addding git ignore file
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
create mode 100644 .gitignore
$ git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)
Now any changes to the .gitignore file will show up as pending changes, any new files outside the tmp dir will show up as untracked files and any changes inside the tmp dir will be ignored.
Don't commit files that you don't want to track
If you've already added conf.php to your git repo, git is tracking the file. When it changes git will say that it has pending changes.
the solution to such things is to NOT commit files you don't want to track. Instead what you can do though, is to commit a default file, e.g.:
$ mv conf.php conf.php.default
$ # Edit conf.php.default to be in an appropriate state if necessary
$ git commit -v -m "moving conf.php file"
$ cp conf.php.default conf.php
Now any changes you make to conf.php - will not show up as unstaged changes.
if you want to add a empty config file to your project and then not track any additonal changes then you can do this:
edit conf.php to be in the state you want it to stay
add and commit the config.php
run the following git command:
git update-index --assume-unchanged conf.php
You will no longer see conf.php as having pending changes
To start tracking changes again, run this command:
git update-index --no-assume-unchanged conf.php
Just run git rm --cached conf.php
If you have more commited files to ignore:
git rm -r --cached .
git add .
Then commit and push your changes.
How can I ignore directories or folders in Git using msysgit on Windows?
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.
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"
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.
To ignore an entire directory place a .gitignore of “*” there.
For 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)
You could just “dirB/“ here
Ignored Directory (/root/dirB/.gitignore)
Or you could “*” here
Git watches for gitignore at every step of the file system. So here I choose dirB/.gitignore as “*” to ignore dirB/, including all files and subdirs within.
Done ☺️
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.
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".
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
You can create the ".gitignore" file with the contents:
*
!.gitignore
It works for me.
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/
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.
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.
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
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 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.)
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.
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
Just create .gitignore file in your project folder Then add the name of the folder in it for ex:
frontend/node_modules
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.
Temporarily ignore a directory/file that was already in git:
I have a lot of projects in a multi-project gradle project and they can take a long time to delete them, and they're all pretty much the same but different. From time to time I want to remove those from the gradle build by deleting them altogether. git can get them back after all. However I don't want them showing up in git status either. So I use the following simple procedure;
delete files and folders I don't want.
verify build still works
tell git to ignore the deleted files for a bit (we can get them back)
git ls-files --deleted -z | git update-index --assume-unchanged -z
--stdin
go about life without the dirs until you want them back. Then run the same command as before but switch out assume-unchanged for no-assume-unchanged
git ls-files --deleted -z | git update-index --no-assume-unchanged -z
--stdin