1gitignore(5) 2============ 3 4NAME 5---- 6gitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore 7 8SYNOPSIS 9-------- 10$GIT_DIR/info/exclude, .gitignore 11 12DESCRIPTION 13----------- 14 15A `gitignore` file specifies intentionally untracked files that 16git should ignore. 17Files already tracked by git are not affected; see the NOTES 18below for details. 19 20Each line in a `gitignore` file specifies a pattern. 21When deciding whether to ignore a path, git normally checks 22`gitignore` patterns from multiple sources, with the following 23order of precedence, from highest to lowest (within one level of 24precedence, the last matching pattern decides the outcome): 25 26 * Patterns read from the command line for those commands that support 27 them. 28 29 * Patterns read from a `.gitignore` file in the same directory 30 as the path, or in any parent directory, with patterns in the 31 higher level files (up to the toplevel of the work tree) being overridden 32 by those in lower level files down to the directory containing the file. 33 These patterns match relative to the location of the 34 `.gitignore` file. A project normally includes such 35 `.gitignore` files in its repository, containing patterns for 36 files generated as part of the project build. 37 38 * Patterns read from `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude`. 39 40 * Patterns read from the file specified by the configuration 41 variable 'core.excludesfile'. 42 43Which file to place a pattern in depends on how the pattern is meant to 44be used. Patterns which should be version-controlled and distributed to 45other repositories via clone (i.e., files that all developers will want 46to ignore) should go into a `.gitignore` file. Patterns which are 47specific to a particular repository but which do not need to be shared 48with other related repositories (e.g., auxiliary files that live inside 49the repository but are specific to one user's workflow) should go into 50the `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude` file. Patterns which a user wants git to 51ignore in all situations (e.g., backup or temporary files generated by 52the user's editor of choice) generally go into a file specified by 53`core.excludesfile` in the user's `~/.gitconfig`. Its default value is 54$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or empty, 55$HOME/.config/git/ignore is used instead. 56 57The underlying git plumbing tools, such as 58'git ls-files' and 'git read-tree', read 59`gitignore` patterns specified by command-line options, or from 60files specified by command-line options. Higher-level git 61tools, such as 'git status' and 'git add', 62use patterns from the sources specified above. 63 64PATTERN FORMAT 65-------------- 66 67 - A blank line matches no files, so it can serve as a separator 68 for readability. 69 70 - A line starting with # serves as a comment. 71 72 - An optional prefix '!' which negates the pattern; any 73 matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become 74 included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will 75 override lower precedence patterns sources. 76 77 - If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the 78 purpose of the following description, but it would only find 79 a match with a directory. In other words, `foo/` will match a 80 directory `foo` and paths underneath it, but will not match a 81 regular file or a symbolic link `foo` (this is consistent 82 with the way how pathspec works in general in git). 83 84 - If the pattern does not contain a slash '/', git treats it as 85 a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the 86 pathname relative to the location of the `.gitignore` file 87 (relative to the toplevel of the work tree if not from a 88 `.gitignore` file). 89 90 - Otherwise, git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable 91 for consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag: 92 wildcards in the pattern will not match a / in the pathname. 93 For example, "Documentation/{asterisk}.html" matches 94 "Documentation/git.html" but not "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html" 95 or "tools/perf/Documentation/perf.html". 96 97 - A leading slash matches the beginning of the pathname. 98 For example, "/{asterisk}.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not 99 "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c". 100 101NOTES 102----- 103 104The purpose of gitignore files is to ensure that certain files 105not tracked by git remain untracked. 106 107To ignore uncommitted changes in a file that is already tracked, 108use 'git update-index {litdd}assume-unchanged'. 109 110To stop tracking a file that is currently tracked, use 111'git rm --cached'. 112 113EXAMPLES 114-------- 115 116-------------------------------------------------------------- 117 $ git status 118 [...] 119 # Untracked files: 120 [...] 121 # Documentation/foo.html 122 # Documentation/gitignore.html 123 # file.o 124 # lib.a 125 # src/internal.o 126 [...] 127 $ cat .git/info/exclude 128 # ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree. 129 *.[oa] 130 $ cat Documentation/.gitignore 131 # ignore generated html files, 132 *.html 133 # except foo.html which is maintained by hand 134 !foo.html 135 $ git status 136 [...] 137 # Untracked files: 138 [...] 139 # Documentation/foo.html 140 [...] 141-------------------------------------------------------------- 142 143Another example: 144 145-------------------------------------------------------------- 146 $ cat .gitignore 147 vmlinux* 148 $ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm* 149 arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S 150 $ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore 151-------------------------------------------------------------- 152 153The second .gitignore prevents git from ignoring 154`arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S`. 155 156SEE ALSO 157-------- 158linkgit:git-rm[1], linkgit:git-update-index[1], 159linkgit:gitrepository-layout[5] 160 161GIT 162--- 163Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite