Show ignored files in git

Question

I am getting my feet wet on git and have the following issue:

My project source tree:

/
|
+--src/
+----refs/
+----...
|
+--vendor/
+----...

I have code (currently MEF) in my vendor branch that I will compile there and then move the references into /src/refs which is where the project picks them up from.

My issue is that I have my .gitignore set to ignore *.dll and *.pdb. I can do a 'git add -f bar.dll' to force the add of the ignored file which is ok, the problem is I can not figure out to list what files exist that are ignored.

I want to list the ignored files to make sure that I don't forget to add them.

I have read the man page on git-ls-files and can not make it work. It seems to me that 'git ls-files --exclude-standard -i' should do what I want. What am I missing?

UPDATE:

git ls-files -i will not work, you get the error: ls-files: --ignored needs some exclude pattern

git-ls-files --others -i --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude as VonC sugested below is indeed the answer. the --exclude-standard option also works instead of --exclude-from.

Summary of what works:

git-ls-files --others -i --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude
git-ls-files --others -i --exclude-standard

Answer 1

git ls-files -i

should work, except its source code indicates:

if (show_ignored && !exc_given) {
                fprintf(stderr, "%s: --ignored needs some exclude pattern\n",
                        argv[0]);

exc_given ?

It turns out it need one more parameter after the -i to actually list anything:

Try:

git ls-files -i --exclude-from=[Path_To_Your_Global].gitignore

(but that would only list your cached (non-ignored) object, with a filter, so that is not quite what you want)

---

Example:

$ cat .git/ignore
    # 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 ls-files --ignored \
        --exclude='Documentation/*.[0-9]' \
        --exclude-from=.git/ignore \
        --exclude-per-directory=.gitignore

---

Actually, in my 'gitignore' file (called 'exclude'), I find a command line that could help you:

F:\prog\git\test\.git\info>type exclude
# git ls-files --others --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude
# Lines that start with '#' are comments.
# For a project mostly in C, the following would be a good set of
# exclude patterns (uncomment them if you want to use them):
# *.[oa]
# *~

So....

git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude
git ls-files -o -i --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude

git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard
git ls-files -o -i --exclude-standard

should do the trick.

As mentioned in the ls-files man page, --others is the important part, in order to show you non-cached, non-committed, normally-ignored files.

--exclude_standard is not just a shortcut, but a way to include all standard "ignored patterns" settings.

exclude-standard
Add the standard git exclusions: .git/info/exclude, .gitignore in each directory, and the user's global exclusion file.

Answer 2

While generally correct your solution does not work in all circumstances. Assume a repo dir like this:

# ls **/*                                                                                                       
doc/index.html  README.txt  tmp/dir0/file0  tmp/file1  tmp/file2

doc:
index.html

tmp:
dir0  file1  file2

tmp/dir0:
file0

and a .gitignore like this:

# cat .gitignore
doc
tmp/*

This ignores the doc directory and all files below tmp. Git works as expected, but the given command for listing the ignored files does not. Lets have a look at what git has to say:

# git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard                                                            
tmp/file1
tmp/file2

Notice that doc is missing from the listing. You can get it with:

# git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard --directory                                                
doc/

Notice the additional --directory option.

From my knowledge there is no one command to list all ignored files at once. But I don't know why tmp/dir0 does not show up at all.

Answer 3

Another option that's pretty clean (No pun intended.):

git clean -Xn

Explanation:

git help clean

git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree
-X - Remove only files ignored by git.
-n, --dry-run - Don't actually remove anything, just show what would be done.

Cheers, mate.

Matt

P.S. I'm not actually Australian, just proud of my answer. :)