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