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. 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 - An optional prefix "`!`" which negates the pattern; any 81 matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become 82 included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will 83 override lower precedence patterns sources. 84 Put a backslash ("`\`") in front of the first "`!`" for patterns 85 that begin with a literal "`!`", for example, "`\!important!.txt`". 86 87 - If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the 88 purpose of the following description, but it would only find 89 a match with a directory. In other words, `foo/` will match a 90 directory `foo` and paths underneath it, but will not match a 91 regular file or a symbolic link `foo` (this is consistent 92 with the way how pathspec works in general in Git). 93 94 - If the pattern does not contain a slash '/', Git treats it as 95 a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the 96 pathname relative to the location of the `.gitignore` file 97 (relative to the toplevel of the work tree if not from a 98 `.gitignore` file). 99 100 - Otherwise, Git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable 101 for consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag: 102 wildcards in the pattern will not match a / in the pathname. 103 For example, "Documentation/{asterisk}.html" matches 104 "Documentation/git.html" but not "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html" 105 or "tools/perf/Documentation/perf.html". 106 107 - A leading slash matches the beginning of the pathname. 108 For example, "/{asterisk}.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not 109 "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c". 110 111Two consecutive asterisks ("`**`") in patterns matched against 112full pathname may have special meaning: 113 114 - A leading "`**`" followed by a slash means match in all 115 directories. For example, "`**/foo`" matches file or directory 116 "`foo`" anywhere, the same as pattern "`foo`". "**/foo/bar" 117 matches file or directory "`bar`" anywhere that is directly 118 under directory "`foo`". 119 120 - A trailing "/**" matches everything inside. For example, 121 "abc/**" matches all files inside directory "abc", relative 122 to the location of the `.gitignore` file, with infinite depth. 123 124 - A slash followed by two consecutive asterisks then a slash 125 matches zero or more directories. For example, "`a/**/b`" 126 matches "`a/b`", "`a/x/b`", "`a/x/y/b`" and so on. 127 128 - Other consecutive asterisks are considered invalid. 129 130NOTES 131----- 132 133The purpose of gitignore files is to ensure that certain files 134not tracked by Git remain untracked. 135 136To ignore uncommitted changes in a file that is already tracked, 137use 'git update-index {litdd}assume-unchanged'. 138 139To stop tracking a file that is currently tracked, use 140'git rm --cached'. 141 142EXAMPLES 143-------- 144 145-------------------------------------------------------------- 146 $ git status 147 [...] 148 # Untracked files: 149 [...] 150 # Documentation/foo.html 151 # Documentation/gitignore.html 152 # file.o 153 # lib.a 154 # src/internal.o 155 [...] 156 $ cat .git/info/exclude 157 # ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree. 158 *.[oa] 159 $ cat Documentation/.gitignore 160 # ignore generated html files, 161 *.html 162 # except foo.html which is maintained by hand 163 !foo.html 164 $ git status 165 [...] 166 # Untracked files: 167 [...] 168 # Documentation/foo.html 169 [...] 170-------------------------------------------------------------- 171 172Another example: 173 174-------------------------------------------------------------- 175 $ cat .gitignore 176 vmlinux* 177 $ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm* 178 arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S 179 $ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore 180-------------------------------------------------------------- 181 182The second .gitignore prevents Git from ignoring 183`arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S`. 184 185SEE ALSO 186-------- 187linkgit:git-rm[1], 188linkgit:git-update-index[1], 189linkgit:gitrepository-layout[5], 190linkgit:git-check-ignore[1] 191 192GIT 193--- 194Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite