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 - The slash '/' is used as the directory separator. Separators may 93 occur at the beginning, middle or end of the `.gitignore` search pattern. 94 95 - If there is a separator at the beginning or middle (or both) of the 96 pattern, then the pattern is relative to the directory level of the 97 particular `.gitignore` file itself. Otherwise the pattern may also 98 match at any level below the `.gitignore` level. 99 100 - If there is a separator at the end of the pattern then the pattern 101 will only match directories, otherwise the pattern can match both 102 files and directories. 103 104 - For example, a pattern `doc/frotz/` matches `doc/frotz` directory, 105 but not `a/doc/frotz` directory; however `frotz/` matches `frotz` 106 and `a/frotz` that is a directory (all paths are relative from 107 the `.gitignore` file). 108 109 - An asterisk "`*`" matches anything except a slash. 110 The character "`?`" matches any one character except "`/`". 111 The range notation, e.g. `[a-zA-Z]`, can be used to match 112 one of the characters in a range. See fnmatch(3) and the 113 FNM_PATHNAME flag for a more detailed description. 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 regular asterisks and 133 will match according to the previous rules. 134 135CONFIGURATION 136------------- 137 138The optional configuration variable `core.excludesFile` indicates a path to a 139file containing patterns of file names to exclude, similar to 140`$GIT_DIR/info/exclude`. Patterns in the exclude file are used in addition to 141those in `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude`. 142 143NOTES 144----- 145 146The purpose of gitignore files is to ensure that certain files 147not tracked by Git remain untracked. 148 149To stop tracking a file that is currently tracked, use 150'git rm --cached'. 151 152EXAMPLES 153-------- 154 155 - The pattern `hello.*` matches any file or folder 156 whose name begins with `hello`. If one wants to restrict 157 this only to the directory and not in its subdirectories, 158 one can prepend the pattern with a slash, i.e. `/hello.*`; 159 the pattern now matches `hello.txt`, `hello.c` but not 160 `a/hello.java`. 161 162 - The pattern `foo/` will match a directory `foo` and 163 paths underneath it, but will not match a regular file 164 or a symbolic link `foo` (this is consistent with the 165 way how pathspec works in general in Git) 166 167 - The pattern `doc/frotz` and `/doc/frotz` have the same effect 168 in any `.gitignore` file. In other words, a leading slash 169 is not relevant if there is already a middle slash in 170 the pattern. 171 172 - The pattern "foo/*", matches "foo/test.json" 173 (a regular file), "foo/bar" (a directory), but it does not match 174 "foo/bar/hello.c" (a regular file), as the asterisk in the 175 pattern does not match "bar/hello.c" which has a slash in it. 176 177-------------------------------------------------------------- 178 $ git status 179 [...] 180 # Untracked files: 181 [...] 182 # Documentation/foo.html 183 # Documentation/gitignore.html 184 # file.o 185 # lib.a 186 # src/internal.o 187 [...] 188 $ cat .git/info/exclude 189 # ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree. 190 *.[oa] 191 $ cat Documentation/.gitignore 192 # ignore generated html files, 193 *.html 194 # except foo.html which is maintained by hand 195 !foo.html 196 $ git status 197 [...] 198 # Untracked files: 199 [...] 200 # Documentation/foo.html 201 [...] 202-------------------------------------------------------------- 203 204Another example: 205 206-------------------------------------------------------------- 207 $ cat .gitignore 208 vmlinux* 209 $ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm* 210 arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S 211 $ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore 212-------------------------------------------------------------- 213 214The second .gitignore prevents Git from ignoring 215`arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S`. 216 217Example to exclude everything except a specific directory `foo/bar` 218(note the `/*` - without the slash, the wildcard would also exclude 219everything within `foo/bar`): 220 221-------------------------------------------------------------- 222 $ cat .gitignore 223 # exclude everything except directory foo/bar 224 /* 225 !/foo 226 /foo/* 227 !/foo/bar 228-------------------------------------------------------------- 229 230SEE ALSO 231-------- 232linkgit:git-rm[1], 233linkgit:gitrepository-layout[5], 234linkgit:git-check-ignore[1] 235 236GIT 237--- 238Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite