Documentation/gitignore.txt

   1 gitignore(5)
   2 ============
   3
   4 NAME
   5 ----
   6 gitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore
   7
   8 SYNOPSIS
   9 --------
  10 $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, .gitignore
  11
  12 DESCRIPTION
  13 -----------
  14
  15 A `gitignore` file specifies intentionally untracked files that
  16 git should ignore.  Each line in a `gitignore` file specifies a
  17 pattern.
  18
  19 When deciding whether to ignore a path, git normally checks
  20 `gitignore` patterns from multiple sources, with the following
  21 order of precedence, from highest to lowest (within one level of
  22 precedence, the last matching pattern decides the outcome):
  23
  24  * Patterns read from the command line for those commands that support
  25    them.
  26
  27  * Patterns read from a `.gitignore` file in the same directory
  28    as the path, or in any parent directory, with patterns in the
  29    higher level files (up to the root) being overridden by those in
  30    lower level files down to the directory containing the file.
  31    These patterns match relative to the location of the
  32    `.gitignore` file.  A project normally includes such
  33    `.gitignore` files in its repository, containing patterns for
  34    files generated as part of the project build.
  35
  36  * Patterns read from `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude`.
  37
  38  * Patterns read from the file specified by the configuration
  39    variable 'core.excludesfile'.
  40
  41 Which file to place a pattern in depends on how the pattern is meant to
  42 be used. Patterns which should be version-controlled and distributed to
  43 other repositories via clone (i.e., files that all developers will want
  44 to ignore) should go into a `.gitignore` file. Patterns which are
  45 specific to a particular repository but which do not need to be shared
  46 with other related repositories (e.g., auxiliary files that live inside
  47 the repository but are specific to one user's workflow) should go into
  48 the `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude` file.  Patterns which a user wants git to
  49 ignore in all situations (e.g., backup or temporary files generated by
  50 the user's editor of choice) generally go into a file specified by
  51 `core.excludesfile` in the user's `~/.gitconfig`.
  52
  53 The underlying git plumbing tools, such as
  54 linkgit:git-ls-files[1] and linkgit:git-read-tree[1], read
  55 `gitignore` patterns specified by command-line options, or from
  56 files specified by command-line options.  Higher-level git
  57 tools, such as linkgit:git-status[1] and linkgit:git-add[1],
  58 use patterns from the sources specified above.
  59
  60 Patterns have the following format:
  61
  62  - A blank line matches no files, so it can serve as a separator
  63    for readability.
  64
  65  - A line starting with # serves as a comment.
  66
  67  - An optional prefix '!' which negates the pattern; any
  68    matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become
  69    included again.  If a negated pattern matches, this will
  70    override lower precedence patterns sources.
  71
  72  - If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the
  73    purpose of the following description, but it would only find
  74    a match with a directory.  In other words, `foo/` will match a
  75    directory `foo` and paths underneath it, but will not match a
  76    regular file or a symbolic link `foo` (this is consistent
  77    with the way how pathspec works in general in git).
  78
  79  - If the pattern does not contain a slash '/', git treats it as
  80    a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the
  81    pathname without leading directories.
  82
  83  - Otherwise, git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable
  84    for consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag:
  85    wildcards in the pattern will not match a / in the pathname.
  86    For example, "Documentation/\*.html" matches
  87    "Documentation/git.html" but not
  88    "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html".  A leading slash matches the
  89    beginning of the pathname; for example, "/*.c" matches
  90    "cat-file.c" but not "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c".
  91
  92 An example:
  93
  94 --------------------------------------------------------------
  95     $ git status
  96     [...]
  97     # Untracked files:
  98     [...]
  99     #       Documentation/foo.html
 100     #       Documentation/gitignore.html
 101     #       file.o
 102     #       lib.a
 103     #       src/internal.o
 104     [...]
 105     $ cat .git/info/exclude
 106     # ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree.
 107     *.[oa]
 108     $ cat Documentation/.gitignore
 109     # ignore generated html files,
 110     *.html
 111     # except foo.html which is maintained by hand
 112     !foo.html
 113     $ git status
 114     [...]
 115     # Untracked files:
 116     [...]
 117     #       Documentation/foo.html
 118     [...]
 119 --------------------------------------------------------------
 120
 121 Another example:
 122
 123 --------------------------------------------------------------
 124     $ cat .gitignore
 125     vmlinux*
 126     $ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm*
 127     arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
 128     $ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore
 129 --------------------------------------------------------------
 130
 131 The second .gitignore prevents git from ignoring
 132 `arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S`.
 133
 134 Documentation
 135 -------------
 136 Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano, Josh Triplett,
 137 Frank Lichtenheld, and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
 138
 139 GIT
 140 ---
 141 Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite