Johan Herland <johan@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > +[[ignoring-files]] > +Ignoring files > +-------------- Looks good ;-). > +A project will often generate files that you do 'not' want to track with git. > +This typically includes files generated by a build process or temporary > +backup files made by your editor. Of course, 'not' tracking files with git > +is just a matter of 'not' calling "git add" on them. But it might be > +annoying to have these untracked files automatically showing up in the > +output of "git status", in the commit message template, etc. Another point about this annoyance factor is that "git-add ." does not add files that are excluded. > +Git therefore provides "exclude patterns" for telling git which files to > +actively ignore. Exclude patterns are thoroughly explained in the > +"Exclude Patterns" section of the gitlink:git-ls-files[1] manual page, > +but the heart of the concept is simply a list of files which git should > +ignore. Entries in the list may contain globs to specify multiple files, > +or may be prefixed by "`!`" to explicitly include (un-ignore) a file. I think you can safely teach the reader that later entries override the earlier ones here, as you are about to give such an example just below. > +The following example should illustrate such patterns: > + > +------------------------------------------------- > +# Lines starting with '#' are considered comments. > +# Ignore foo.txt. > +foo.txt > +# Ignore (generated) html files, > +*.html > +# except foo.html which is maintained by hand. > +!foo.html > +# Ignore objects and archives. > +*.[oa] > +------------------------------------------------- > +The next question is where to put these exclude patterns so that git can > +find them. Git looks for exclude patterns in the following files: > + > +`.gitignore` files in your working tree::: > + You may store multiple `.gitignore` files at various locations in your > + working tree. Each `.gitignore` file is applied to the directory where > + it's located, including its subdirectories. Furthermore, the > + `.gitignore` files can be tracked like any other files in your working > + tree; just do a `git add .gitignore` and commit. `.gitignore` is > + therefore the perfect place to put exclude patterns that match > + ignored files that pop up in every copy of your project, such as > + build output files (e.g. `\*.o`), etc. ... and more importantly, the patterns that are _meant_ to be shared by all the project participants. I think it is probably easier to follow if you explain that in-tree .gitignore is not about personal preference upfront in this section, rather than saying it in .git/info/exclude section. - 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
