linkIgnoring Files with Git using a .gitignore

What's a dotfile? It's a file with a 'dot' in front of it!

The dotfile convention was created by developers as a standard way to store and hide configuration files from regular users

You can create a .gitignore dotfile, either in your repo (per project) or globally (for all projects)

linkWhy might we want to use a .gitignore?

Often, for example when you are building a java application, there are many files that are created, that are not relevant to the project itself.

For example .class files, are compiled java bytecode, they have no place being committed to a shared repository! It's not the actual code.

Another common reason (not a particularly smart one however, but works!) is to prevent the sharing of a secret file i.e a API key for your project. For one man teams (is that even a team? 😆) this might be acceptable. But for larger teams, realistically you should be using a secrets management tool such as HashiCorp vault. NOTE: Your DevSecOps guy will get mad at you if you recommend env variables as they can be exposed in transit. Just saying!

1link$# Check that you do not already have a global .gitignore file

2link$git config --get core.excludesfile

3link$# Create a global .gitignore

4link$git config --global core.excludesFile '~/.gitignore'

1link$# Create a per project .gitignore file

2link$cd my-project

3link$touch .gitignore

4link$# Create a file we will ignore. Will NOT be included when running git add. for example

5link$touch ignoreme.please

6link$echo "ignoreme.please" > .gitignore

7link$git add.

8link$git commit -m "adding gitignore"

9link$git push

linkGet started with writing your own Git Ignore by using the templates provided below!

GitHub - github/gitignore: A collection of useful .gitignore templates