Documentation / gitignore.txton commit merge-recursive --renormalize (7610fa5)
   1gitignore(5)
   2============
   3
   4NAME
   5----
   6gitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore
   7
   8SYNOPSIS
   9--------
  10$GIT_DIR/info/exclude, .gitignore
  11
  12DESCRIPTION
  13-----------
  14
  15A `gitignore` file specifies intentionally untracked files that
  16git should ignore.
  17Note that all the `gitignore` files really concern only files
  18that are not already tracked by git;
  19in order to ignore uncommitted changes in already tracked files,
  20please refer to the 'git update-index --assume-unchanged'
  21documentation.
  22
  23Each line in a `gitignore` file specifies a pattern.
  24When deciding whether to ignore a path, git normally checks
  25`gitignore` patterns from multiple sources, with the following
  26order of precedence, from highest to lowest (within one level of
  27precedence, the last matching pattern decides the outcome):
  28
  29 * Patterns read from the command line for those commands that support
  30   them.
  31
  32 * Patterns read from a `.gitignore` file in the same directory
  33   as the path, or in any parent directory, with patterns in the
  34   higher level files (up to the toplevel of the work tree) being overridden
  35   by those in lower level files down to the directory containing the file.
  36   These patterns match relative to the location of the
  37   `.gitignore` file.  A project normally includes such
  38   `.gitignore` files in its repository, containing patterns for
  39   files generated as part of the project build.
  40
  41 * Patterns read from `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude`.
  42
  43 * Patterns read from the file specified by the configuration
  44   variable 'core.excludesfile'.
  45
  46Which file to place a pattern in depends on how the pattern is meant to
  47be used. Patterns which should be version-controlled and distributed to
  48other repositories via clone (i.e., files that all developers will want
  49to ignore) should go into a `.gitignore` file. Patterns which are
  50specific to a particular repository but which do not need to be shared
  51with other related repositories (e.g., auxiliary files that live inside
  52the repository but are specific to one user's workflow) should go into
  53the `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude` file.  Patterns which a user wants git to
  54ignore in all situations (e.g., backup or temporary files generated by
  55the user's editor of choice) generally go into a file specified by
  56`core.excludesfile` in the user's `~/.gitconfig`.
  57
  58The underlying git plumbing tools, such as
  59'git ls-files' and 'git read-tree', read
  60`gitignore` patterns specified by command-line options, or from
  61files specified by command-line options.  Higher-level git
  62tools, such as 'git status' and 'git add',
  63use patterns from the sources specified above.
  64
  65Patterns have the following format:
  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/\*.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, "/*.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not
  99   "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c".
 100
 101An example:
 102
 103--------------------------------------------------------------
 104    $ git status
 105    [...]
 106    # Untracked files:
 107    [...]
 108    #       Documentation/foo.html
 109    #       Documentation/gitignore.html
 110    #       file.o
 111    #       lib.a
 112    #       src/internal.o
 113    [...]
 114    $ cat .git/info/exclude
 115    # ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree.
 116    *.[oa]
 117    $ cat Documentation/.gitignore
 118    # ignore generated html files,
 119    *.html
 120    # except foo.html which is maintained by hand
 121    !foo.html
 122    $ git status
 123    [...]
 124    # Untracked files:
 125    [...]
 126    #       Documentation/foo.html
 127    [...]
 128--------------------------------------------------------------
 129
 130Another example:
 131
 132--------------------------------------------------------------
 133    $ cat .gitignore
 134    vmlinux*
 135    $ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm*
 136    arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
 137    $ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore
 138--------------------------------------------------------------
 139
 140The second .gitignore prevents git from ignoring
 141`arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S`.
 142
 143Documentation
 144-------------
 145Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano, Josh Triplett,
 146Frank Lichtenheld, and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
 147
 148GIT
 149---
 150Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite