Git – Ignore Files To Prevent Commit

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 into the repository. For example, after running a python application pyc files are created as compiled python files. Committing them are unnecessary.

Git Ignore File

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