Heya, I've been bitten by this before, is this behavior intentional? We don't even warn that the user's action was ignored; at the very least we should do that. The current behavior is just frustrating. sverre@laptop-sverre:~/code$ git init ignoretest Initialized empty Git repository in /home/sverre/code/ignoretest/.git/ sverre@laptop-sverre:~/code$ cd ignoretest/ sverre@laptop-sverre:~/code/ignoretest$ mkdir subdir sverre@laptop-sverre:~/code/ignoretest$ echo "hi" >> subdir/a.txt sverre@laptop-sverre:~/code/ignoretest$ echo "subdir" >> .gitignore sverre@laptop-sverre:~/code/ignoretest$ git add .gitignore sverre@laptop-sverre:~/code/ignoretest$ git commit -m "set up ignore" [master (root-commit) 5a5a614] set up ignore 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) create mode 100644 .gitignore sverre@laptop-sverre:~/code/ignoretest$ git add subdir/a.txt sverre@laptop-sverre:~/code/ignoretest$ git status # On branch master nothing to commit (working directory clean) -- Cheers, Sverre Rabbelier -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html