1gitignore(5) 2============ 3 4NAME 5---- 6gitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore 7 8SYNOPSIS 9-------- 10$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore, $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, .gitignore 11 12DESCRIPTION 13----------- 14 15A `gitignore` file specifies intentionally untracked files that 16Git should ignore. 17Files already tracked by Git are not affected; see the NOTES 18below for details. 19 20Each line in a `gitignore` file specifies a pattern. 21When deciding whether to ignore a path, Git normally checks 22`gitignore` patterns from multiple sources, with the following 23order of precedence, from highest to lowest (within one level of 24precedence, the last matching pattern decides the outcome): 25 26 * Patterns read from the command line for those commands that support 27 them. 28 29 * Patterns read from a `.gitignore` file in the same directory 30 as the path, or in any parent directory, with patterns in the 31 higher level files (up to the toplevel of the work tree) being overridden 32 by those in lower level files down to the directory containing the file. 33 These patterns match relative to the location of the 34 `.gitignore` file. A project normally includes such 35 `.gitignore` files in its repository, containing patterns for 36 files generated as part of the project build. 37 38 * Patterns read from `$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. 45 46 * Patterns which should be version-controlled and distributed to 47 other repositories via clone (i.e., files that all developers will want 48 to ignore) should go into a `.gitignore` file. 49 50 * Patterns which are 51 specific to a particular repository but which do not need to be shared 52 with other related repositories (e.g., auxiliary files that live inside 53 the repository but are specific to one user's workflow) should go into 54 the `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude` file. 55 56 * Patterns which a user wants Git to 57 ignore in all situations (e.g., backup or temporary files generated by 58 the user's editor of choice) generally go into a file specified by 59 `core.excludesFile` in the user's `~/.gitconfig`. Its default value is 60 $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or 61 empty, $HOME/.config/git/ignore is used instead. 62 63The underlying Git plumbing tools, such as 64'git ls-files' and 'git read-tree', read 65`gitignore` patterns specified by command-line options, or from 66files specified by command-line options. Higher-level Git 67tools, such as 'git status' and 'git add', 68use patterns from the sources specified above. 69 70PATTERN FORMAT 71-------------- 72 73 - A blank line matches no files, so it can serve as a separator 74 for readability. 75 76 - A line starting with # serves as a comment. 77 Put a backslash ("`\`") in front of the first hash for patterns 78 that begin with a hash. 79 80 - Trailing spaces are ignored unless they are quoted with backslash 81 ("`\`"). 82 83 - An optional prefix "`!`" which negates the pattern; any 84 matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become 85 included again. It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent 86 directory of that file is excluded. Git doesn't list excluded 87 directories for performance reasons, so any patterns on contained 88 files have no effect, no matter where they are defined. 89 Put a backslash ("`\`") in front of the first "`!`" for patterns 90 that begin with a literal "`!`", for example, "`\!important!.txt`". 91 92 - If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the 93 purpose of the following description, but it would only find 94 a match with a directory. In other words, `foo/` will match a 95 directory `foo` and paths underneath it, but will not match a 96 regular file or a symbolic link `foo` (this is consistent 97 with the way how pathspec works in general in Git). 98 99 - If the pattern does not contain a slash '/', Git treats it as 100 a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the 101 pathname relative to the location of the `.gitignore` file 102 (relative to the toplevel of the work tree if not from a 103 `.gitignore` file). 104 105 - Otherwise, Git treats the pattern as a shell glob: "`*`" matches 106 anything except "`/`", "`?`" matches any one character except "`/`" 107 and "`[]`" matches one character in a selected range. See 108 fnmatch(3) and the FNM_PATHNAME flag for a more detailed 109 description. 110 111 - A leading slash matches the beginning of the pathname. 112 For example, "/{asterisk}.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not 113 "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c". 114 115Two consecutive asterisks ("`**`") in patterns matched against 116full pathname may have special meaning: 117 118 - A leading "`**`" followed by a slash means match in all 119 directories. For example, "`**/foo`" matches file or directory 120 "`foo`" anywhere, the same as pattern "`foo`". "`**/foo/bar`" 121 matches file or directory "`bar`" anywhere that is directly 122 under directory "`foo`". 123 124 - A trailing "`/**`" matches everything inside. For example, 125 "`abc/**`" matches all files inside directory "`abc`", relative 126 to the location of the `.gitignore` file, with infinite depth. 127 128 - A slash followed by two consecutive asterisks then a slash 129 matches zero or more directories. For example, "`a/**/b`" 130 matches "`a/b`", "`a/x/b`", "`a/x/y/b`" and so on. 131 132 - Other consecutive asterisks are considered invalid. 133 134NOTES 135----- 136 137The purpose of gitignore files is to ensure that certain files 138not tracked by Git remain untracked. 139 140To stop tracking a file that is currently tracked, use 141'git rm --cached'. 142 143EXAMPLES 144-------- 145 146-------------------------------------------------------------- 147 $ git status 148 [...] 149 # Untracked files: 150 [...] 151 # Documentation/foo.html 152 # Documentation/gitignore.html 153 # file.o 154 # lib.a 155 # src/internal.o 156 [...] 157 $ cat .git/info/exclude 158 # ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree. 159 *.[oa] 160 $ cat Documentation/.gitignore 161 # ignore generated html files, 162 *.html 163 # except foo.html which is maintained by hand 164 !foo.html 165 $ git status 166 [...] 167 # Untracked files: 168 [...] 169 # Documentation/foo.html 170 [...] 171-------------------------------------------------------------- 172 173Another example: 174 175-------------------------------------------------------------- 176 $ cat .gitignore 177 vmlinux* 178 $ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm* 179 arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S 180 $ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore 181-------------------------------------------------------------- 182 183The second .gitignore prevents Git from ignoring 184`arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S`. 185 186Example to exclude everything except a specific directory `foo/bar` 187(note the `/*` - without the slash, the wildcard would also exclude 188everything within `foo/bar`): 189 190-------------------------------------------------------------- 191 $ cat .gitignore 192 # exclude everything except directory foo/bar 193 /* 194 !/foo 195 /foo/* 196 !/foo/bar 197-------------------------------------------------------------- 198 199SEE ALSO 200-------- 201linkgit:git-rm[1], 202linkgit:gitrepository-layout[5], 203linkgit:git-check-ignore[1] 204 205GIT 206--- 207Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite