Git – Ignore Files To Prevent Commit

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Git is used for a lot of different projects. These projects may provide different types of files. Some times some of those files should not be committed in to the repository. For example after running a python application pyc files are created as compiled python files. Committing them are unnesecary.

Git Ignore File

To ignore files the patterns should be defined in a files named .gitignore file. .gitignore file by default resides in the root of the repository but can be used in sub directories too.

$ echo "*.pyc" > .gitignore 
$ cat .gitignore  
*.pyc 
$ echo "*.tmp" >> .gitignore   
$ cat .gitignore             
*.pyc 
*.tmp
  • *.pyc means any file ends with pyc extension
  • Each line for one entry
$ cat .gitignore  
*.pyc 
#temp files 
*.tmp
  • # is used as comment and no effect on files those will be ignored
$ cat .gitignore  
/build
  • /build directory is completely ignored
$ cat .gitignore  
/build/*.out
  • All files in /build directory with extension .out

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