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
Related
I have a file called sohuku.txt. I have another folder named .gitignore.txt inside which I have put 'sohuku.txt', but when I type 'git add .' in PowerShell and then type git status, it shows the file in changes to be committed. what to do?
The .gitignore file should be at the root of the repository and named properly. https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore
The file has to be named .gitignore, not .gitignore.txt
If windows won't let you rename it (an error like "you must type a filename"), then rename it to .gitignore.
gitignore is file, remove .txt from file name
.gitignore.txt -> .gitignore
Don't put .txt on the .gitignore file...
So you can pass the file name that you don't want to push to git.
create .gitignore file in your root / directory without any extension.
/
src
index.js
.gitignore
want to remove the .txt files, just add in the .gitignore file
*.txt
and remove the old commit:
$ git reset HEAD~
<< edit files as necessary >>
$ git add ...
$ git commit -c ORIG_HEAD
Undo git to learn more
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)
I'm placing my .gitignore file in the same location as the *.jucer file and the .gitignore file contains:
./Builds/*
./JuceLibraryCode/*
As I only want to back up the source code folder only.
But whenever I go to commit, tons of of folders and items inside the Builds and JuceLibraryCode folder are pre checked. How Can I get Xcode to see this ignore file? Is it in the wrong location since the Projucer builds the folder hierarchy in a way that Xcode doesn't understand? I have it in the same location as my .git file.
Also, its worth noting that I recently allowed .git to back up everything, all of the files I'm currently trying to now ignore in those folders, but I did do a git rm --cached on all the files I'm trying to skip, as i read I needed to dump those before the .gitignore would be successful, but still, not luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Remove git cache again.
$ git rm --cached -r .
Add this in .gitignore
Builds/
JuceLibraryCode/
See if git ignore the changes
$ git status
I am setting up my first project in Git. How do I setup git-ignore file in Windows?
I am creating my first Rails project using Vagrant and trying to configure .gitignore in Windows
Easy.
Make a file .gitignore using your text editor
In there, write the file name you'd want to ignore
You can use wildcard like: *.pyc ignoring any file with extension .pyc
If you use TortoiseGit or other Git software, it will be easier. There will be add to ignore list menu when you right click to a file.
It seems that for ignoring files and directories there are two main ways:
.gitignore
Placing .gitignore file into the root of your repo besides .git
folder (in Windows make sure you see the true file extension and then
make .gitignore.
Making global configuration %HOMEPATH%\.gitignore_global and running
git config --global core.excludesfile %HOMEPATH%\.gitignore_global
to add this to your git config.
Note: files tracked before can be untracked by running git rm --cached filename. This absolutely critical for repos that existed BEFORE you created the .gitignore
Repo exclude
For local files that doesn't need to be shared, you just add file pattern or directory to file .git\info\exclude. These rules are not committed, so are not seen by other collaborators in your project. These are machine specific configs.
Windows does not allow you to create a "dotfile" (i.e., a file whose name begins with a dot). There are three simple ways to create a .gitignore in Windows, though. In each case, you want the .gitignore in your project's root directory.
In your text editor, create a file and "Save" or "Save As". Name the file ".gitignore" and the text editor works around the OS's limitation. I use Sublime Text 3 and Vim. This method works for both (Vim would use the command :w, though).
A fallback would be to create an empty (for now) text file and save it as .gitignore.txt then go into the command shell and rename the file to .gitignore (using the command line). That will do it.
Git Bash (available in the git installer for Windows) has the "touch" command and it will create dotfiles. At the Git Bash prompt enter the command "touch .gitignore" and an empty file is created if no file existed with that name.
Add your exclusion rules inside the .gitignore file:
Starting point. This repo will give you sample exclusion patterns for (i) Windows, (ii) Rails and (iii) Vagrant. You could add those to a global gitignore file.
GitIgnore / Patterns. This section of the Git Manual explains the patterns to use in your new gitignore file. Basically, you exclude directories and files that don't need version control.
To add to previous answers that you should use a text editor to create the .gitignore file, I usually first run dir > .gitignore from a Windows command prompt or Powershell window.
This outputs the entire directory listing to a file named .gitignore .
Then it's very easy to use a text editor (e.g., Notepad ++ or Atom) to modify the file from the directory listing and not miss a file or mistype a file name.
For Windows 10 I used:
ls > .gitignore
to create a clean .gitignore file ready to just delete lines where using 'dir' I would have had to also edit out all the explanatory directory text. I needed this when vscode told me I had 5K changes after I added a virtual environment to an existing project.
Each time I try to add a file to my resources which is in gitignore Xcode keeps telling me
"The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files:
res
Use -f if you really want to add them.
fatal: no files added"
So I add my resources by removing the res folder from gitignore, then dropping the file onto Xcode, and finally adding the res folder again to gitignore and removing any stage changes.
Is there a better way to do this procedure?
I'm keeping my res folder in gitignore because of too many binary files, otherwise the git folder would start to increase its size astronomically
You can add them by using the --force flag on add:
git add -f res/foo
git commit -m "more resources"
(or by using wildcards, e.g. git add -f res/*)
Bonus tip: If you want to list the files that have been committed even though they match gitignore, you can do
git ls-files -i --exclude-standard