Is there an ignore command for git like there is for svn?

Question

I am a new user to git and I am starting a new project. I have a bunch of dot files that I would like to ignore. Is there an ignore command for git like there is for svn?

Answer 1

Create a file named .gitignore on the root of your reposiroty. In this file you put the relative path to each file you wish to ignore in a single line. You can use the * wildcard.

Answer 2

You have two ways of ignoring files:

• .gitignore in any folder will ignore the files as specified in the file for that folder. Using wildcards is possible.
• .git/info/exclude holds the global ignore pattern, similar to the global-ignores in subversions configuration file.

Answer 3

There is no special git ignore command. Edit a .gitignore file located in the appropriate place within the working copy.

Note that only file names starting with / will be relative to the directory .gitignore resides in. Everything else will match files in whatever subdirectory.

Run git help gitignore for the details.

Answer 4

It's useful to define a complete .gitignore file for your project. The reward is safe use of the convenient --all or -a flag to commands like add and commit.

Also, consider defining a global ~/.gitignore file for commonly ignored patterns such as *~ , which covers temporary files created by Emacs.