-----------
A `gitignore` file specifies intentionally untracked files that
-git should ignore. Each line in a `gitignore` file specifies a
-pattern.
-
+git should ignore.
+Note that all the `gitignore` files really concern only files
+that are not already tracked by git;
+in order to ignore uncommitted changes in already tracked files,
+please refer to the 'git update-index --assume-unchanged'
+documentation.
+
+Each line in a `gitignore` file specifies a pattern.
When deciding whether to ignore a path, git normally checks
`gitignore` patterns from multiple sources, with the following
order of precedence, from highest to lowest (within one level of
* Patterns read from a `.gitignore` file in the same directory
as the path, or in any parent directory, with patterns in the
- higher level files (up to the root) being overriden by those in
+ higher level files (up to the root) being overridden by those in
lower level files down to the directory containing the file.
These patterns match relative to the location of the
`.gitignore` file. A project normally includes such
* Patterns read from the file specified by the configuration
variable 'core.excludesfile'.
+Which file to place a pattern in depends on how the pattern is meant to
+be used. Patterns which should be version-controlled and distributed to
+other repositories via clone (i.e., files that all developers will want
+to ignore) should go into a `.gitignore` file. Patterns which are
+specific to a particular repository but which do not need to be shared
+with other related repositories (e.g., auxiliary files that live inside
+the repository but are specific to one user's workflow) should go into
+the `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude` file. Patterns which a user wants git to
+ignore in all situations (e.g., backup or temporary files generated by
+the user's editor of choice) generally go into a file specified by
+`core.excludesfile` in the user's `~/.gitconfig`.
+
The underlying git plumbing tools, such as
-gitlink:git-ls-files[1] and gitlink:git-read-tree[1], read
+'git-ls-files' and 'git-read-tree', read
`gitignore` patterns specified by command-line options, or from
files specified by command-line options. Higher-level git
-tools, such as gitlink:git-status[1] and gitlink:git-add[1],
+tools, such as 'git-status' and 'git-add',
use patterns from the sources specified above.
Patterns have the following format:
included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will
override lower precedence patterns sources.
+ - If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the
+ purpose of the following description, but it would only find
+ a match with a directory. In other words, `foo/` will match a
+ directory `foo` and paths underneath it, but will not match a
+ regular file or a symbolic link `foo` (this is consistent
+ with the way how pathspec works in general in git).
+
- If the pattern does not contain a slash '/', git treats it as
a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the
pathname without leading directories.
An example:
--------------------------------------------------------------
- $ git-status
+ $ git status
[...]
# Untracked files:
[...]
*.html
# except foo.html which is maintained by hand
!foo.html
- $ git-status
+ $ git status
[...]
# Untracked files:
[...]
GIT
---
-Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite
+Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite