Christopher Kade

Posted on Jun 16, 2019

I created a .gitignore command-line generator !

#webdev #showdev #opensource

If you're like me, you pretty much Google "gitignore templates" each time you start a new project from scratch. That's at least 15 seconds you'll never get back, so I made a command-line tool for that 🤷‍♂️

Introducing gitignore-it, here's how it works:

Feel free to install it globally, it's super lightweight and will save you a few seconds.

If you want to contribute, you can always create new .gitignore files that will be usable right away.

And if I've saved you those vital few seconds at the beginning of your project, feel free to give it a little ⭐️ Github Link

Top comments (21)

Oyetoke Toby • Jun 16 '19

I made something similar which I am using locally. I called it Gnit, it git init and also ask for the .gitignore folders to add and also select base on language. It is written in python, I can share with anyone tho.

Anil Khatri • Oct 13 '19 • Edited

Great, will love to see your code.

Nick Taylor • Jun 16 '19

Just curious how this differs from the gitignore package that consumes GitHub's awesome gitignore repository.

Elijah Manor

@elijahmanor

Just created a new project and need a language specific .gitignore file? npm.im/gitignore

# generates a node specific .gitignore file
> npx gitignore node

# list all the supported types
> npx gitignore -types

19:16 PM - 04 Apr 2019

github / gitignore

A collection of useful .gitignore templates

A collection of `.gitignore` templates

This is GitHub’s collection of .gitignore file templates We use this list to populate the .gitignore template choosers available in the GitHub.com interface when creating new repositories and files.

For more information about how .gitignore files work, and how to use them the following resources are a great place to start:

The Ignoring Files chapter of the Pro Git book.
The Ignoring Files article on the GitHub Help site.
The gitignore(5) manual page.

Folder structure

We support a collection of templates, organized in this way:

The root folder contains templates in common use, to help people get started with popular programming languages and technologies. These define a meaningful set of rules to help get started, and ensure you are not committing unimportant files into your repository.
Global contains templates for various editors, tools and operating systems that can be used in different situations. It is…

View on GitHub

Christopher Kade • Jun 16 '19 • Edited

Hey, thanks for sharing this package, I did not know of its existance. I did know of Github's list though as I've used it.

At the moment, the only difference is that I prompt the user for a language. Eventually, I'd like to generate the gitignore automatically based on the user's environment.

Jaxcoder • Jan 14 '20

That would be great adding the .gitignore during scaffolding automatically based on the environment.

Vlastimil Pospichal • Jun 17 '19 • Edited

Create an alias to Git to write:

git ignore -h          # help
git ignore -a "*.tmp"  # add row
git ignore -e          # edit .gitignore
git ignore -l          # list of templates
git ignore             # show .gitignore
git ignore Node        # select template

... etc. I have an alias git exclude too.

Jaxcoder • Jan 14 '20

I am going to definitely check this out for I have been starting a lot more applications using Visual Studio Code and command line and having nice tools to help be just a bit more productive adds up over time to save time.

Ben Halpern • Jun 16 '19

Cool!

Arthur Brainville • Jun 17 '19

This is nice. Many times in the past I copy-pasted the content of one of the sample gitingore for various programming languages that are maintained on GitHub here github.com/github/gitignore

Looks like you've made a nice time saving tool right there! 😄

Matt Harris • Jun 18 '19

I actually just published a similar kind of utility for generating "grepignore" files and some other nice things for searching. I was thinking pretty much the same thing you wrote while I was making it.

I can see the gitignore being pretty useful though, I spent way longer than I should have earlier today trying to figure out the right string to get rid of a bunch of junk from a commit.