Documentation/gitignore.txt

gitignore(5)
============

NAME
----
gitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore

SYNOPSIS
--------
$GIT_DIR/info/exclude, .gitignore

DESCRIPTION
-----------

A `gitignore` file specifies intentionally untracked files that
git should ignore.  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:

 * Patterns read from the file specified by the configuration
   variable 'core.excludesfile'.

 * Patterns read from `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude`.

 * Patterns read from a `.gitignore` file in the same directory
   as the path, or in any parent directory, ordered from the
   deepest such file to a file in the root of the repository.
   These patterns match relative to the location of the
   `.gitignore` file.  A project normally includes such
   `.gitignore` files in its repository, containing patterns for
   files generated as part of the project build.

The underlying git plumbing tools, such as
gitlink:git-ls-files[1] and gitlink:git-read-tree[1], 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],
use patterns from the sources specified above.

Patterns have the following format:

 - A blank line matches no files, so it can serve as a separator
   for readability.

 - A line starting with # serves as a comment.

 - An optional prefix '!' which negates the pattern; any
   matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become
   included again.

 - 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.

 - Otherwise, git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable
   for consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag:
   wildcards in the pattern will not match a / in the pathname.
   For example, "Documentation/\*.html" matches
   "Documentation/git.html" but not
   "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html".  A leading slash matches the
   beginning of the pathname; for example, "/*.c" matches
   "cat-file.c" but not "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c".

An example:

--------------------------------------------------------------
    $ git-status
    [...]
    # Untracked files:
    [...]
    #       Documentation/foo.html
    #       Documentation/gitignore.html
    #       file.o
    #       lib.a
    #       src/internal.o
    [...]
    $ cat .git/info/exclude
    # ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree.
    *.[oa]
    $ cat Documentation/.gitignore
    # ignore generated html files,
    *.html
    # except foo.html which is maintained by hand
    !foo.html
    $ git-status
    [...]
    # Untracked files:
    [...]
    #       Documentation/foo.html
    [...]
--------------------------------------------------------------

Another example:

--------------------------------------------------------------
    $ cat .gitignore
    vmlinux*
    $ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm*
    arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
    $ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore
--------------------------------------------------------------

The second .gitignore prevents git from ignoring
`arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S`.

Documentation
-------------
Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano, Josh Triplett,
Frank Lichtenheld, and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.

GIT
---
Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite