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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. 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 precedence, the last matching pattern
       decides the outcome):

       o   Patterns read from the command line for those commands that support
           them.

       o   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 toplevel of the work tree) 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 .gitignore files
           in its repository, containing patterns for files generated as part
           of the project build.

       o   Patterns read from $GIT_DIR/info/exclude.

       o   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 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 git status and git add, use patterns from the sources
       specified above.

       Patterns have the following format:

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

       o   A line starting with # serves as a comment.

       o   An optional prefix !  which negates the pattern; any matching file
           excluded by a previous pattern will become included again. If a
           negated pattern matches, this will override lower precedence
           patterns sources.

       o   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).

       o   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.

       o   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[1]>.

GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES

        1. git@vger.kernel.org
           mailto:git@vger.kernel.org