1gitignore(5) 2============ 3 4NAME 5---- 6gitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore 7 8SYNOPSIS 9-------- 10$GIT_DIR/info/exclude, .gitignore 11 12DESCRIPTION 13----------- 14 15A `gitignore` file specifies intentionally untracked files that 16git should ignore. Each line in a `gitignore` file specifies a 17pattern. 18 19When deciding whether to ignore a path, git normally checks 20`gitignore` patterns from multiple sources, with the following 21order of precedence, from highest to lowest (within one level of 22precedence, the last matching pattern decides the outcome): 23 24 * Patterns read from the command line for those commands that support 25 them. 26 27 * Patterns read from a `.gitignore` file in the same directory 28 as the path, or in any parent directory, with patterns in the 29 higher level files (up to the root) being overridden by those in 30 lower level files down to the directory containing the file. 31 These patterns match relative to the location of the 32 `.gitignore` file. A project normally includes such 33 `.gitignore` files in its repository, containing patterns for 34 files generated as part of the project build. 35 36 * Patterns read from `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude`. 37 38 * Patterns read from the file specified by the configuration 39 variable 'core.excludesfile'. 40 41The underlying git plumbing tools, such as 42linkgit:git-ls-files[1] and linkgit:git-read-tree[1], read 43`gitignore` patterns specified by command-line options, or from 44files specified by command-line options. Higher-level git 45tools, such as linkgit:git-status[1] and linkgit:git-add[1], 46use patterns from the sources specified above. 47 48Patterns have the following format: 49 50 - A blank line matches no files, so it can serve as a separator 51 for readability. 52 53 - A line starting with # serves as a comment. 54 55 - An optional prefix '!' which negates the pattern; any 56 matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become 57 included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will 58 override lower precedence patterns sources. 59 60 - If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the 61 purpose of the following description, but it would only find 62 a match with a directory. In other words, `foo/` will match a 63 directory `foo` and paths underneath it, but will not match a 64 regular file or a symbolic link `foo` (this is consistent 65 with the way how pathspec works in general in git). 66 67 - If the pattern does not contain a slash '/', git treats it as 68 a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the 69 pathname without leading directories. 70 71 - Otherwise, git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable 72 for consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag: 73 wildcards in the pattern will not match a / in the pathname. 74 For example, "Documentation/\*.html" matches 75 "Documentation/git.html" but not 76 "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html". A leading slash matches the 77 beginning of the pathname; for example, "/*.c" matches 78 "cat-file.c" but not "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c". 79 80An example: 81 82-------------------------------------------------------------- 83 $ git-status 84 [...] 85 # Untracked files: 86 [...] 87 # Documentation/foo.html 88 # Documentation/gitignore.html 89 # file.o 90 # lib.a 91 # src/internal.o 92 [...] 93 $ cat .git/info/exclude 94 # ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree. 95 *.[oa] 96 $ cat Documentation/.gitignore 97 # ignore generated html files, 98 *.html 99 # except foo.html which is maintained by hand 100 !foo.html 101 $ git-status 102 [...] 103 # Untracked files: 104 [...] 105 # Documentation/foo.html 106 [...] 107-------------------------------------------------------------- 108 109Another example: 110 111-------------------------------------------------------------- 112 $ cat .gitignore 113 vmlinux* 114 $ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm* 115 arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S 116 $ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore 117-------------------------------------------------------------- 118 119The second .gitignore prevents git from ignoring 120`arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S`. 121 122Documentation 123------------- 124Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano, Josh Triplett, 125Frank Lichtenheld, and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 126 127GIT 128--- 129Part of the linkgit:git[7] suite