gitignore.txt

gitignore(5)
============

NAME
----
gitignore - 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'.

The underlying git plumbing tools, such as
gitlink:git-ls-files[1] and gitlink: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 gitlink:git-status[1] and gitlink: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 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 gitlink:git[7] suite