I just asked on Super User:
Are .gitignore files from directories above the repository's or from home directory (~/.gitignore) loaded in any versi...
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git looks for a
.gitignore
file in your current local clone (the dir with .git dir) but you can DRY your gitignore for all your projects by maintaining a global gitignore in a ~/.gitignore for example and you tell git where it is with acore.excludesfile
section declaration.example:
git config --global core.excludesfile
.. should tell you if you have it(if any) If not, you can declare the file where your global user gitignore file is with:
git config --global core.excludesfile "$HOME"/.gitignore
Examine your global git config with
git config --global --list
or brute force just open your $HOME/.gitconfig fileOnce you set up a global .gitignore excludesfile you will not need to keep pasting the same .gitingnore in each repo you work in, thus you have sensible defaults and DRY in play. All the best
so
~/.gitignore
as a custom filename to be mentioned in~/.gitconfig
undercore.excludesfile
is an alternative to~/.config/git/ignore
, but can we say that we are sure no outdated version of Git ever had~/.gitignore
hardcoded, and no outdated version of Git walked further up than$GIT_WORK_TREE
looking for.gitignore
?git does not walk UP anywhere, if I can say that. It only acts on the current directory where
.git
lives; but it also uses the global file (user space, the global in this context means You, the user, not everyone on the machine) located at~/.gitconfig
, which governs how git behaves for You, the user (global may be confusing to people) in all the repos you work on that machine (repo, meaning a working dir with .git dir)The declaration
core.exludesfile
asks you to point to a file that holds theglobal
(to you) ignore patterns you want to apply to all REPOS you have in your workspace. (git-scm.com/docs/gitignore)Where the ignore file is located is irrelevant, but by some sensible default I would suggest
~/.gitingnore
, yet it can be~/gitlistaignorancja
or~/whatever-blabla-git
... - and no,git
never hardcodes the~/.gitignore
name (only local .git/gitignore) . It does respect theGIT_DIR/.gitignore
because it treats it as aWORKSPACE
local ignore patterns (in addition to what's in global excludesfile)Git does not walk up to any dirs up to find stuff (unlike NPM if you ever worked with it). It only looks at your local WORKING DIR (local gitconfig), the global (user space) declarations in
~/.gitignore
and the system (indeed global to all users) file. Hope this makes sense.Hello,
Normally, you have to declare your global ignore file in your
~/.gitconfig
, like here. Than, the ignored files in your global ignore file will be ignore everywhere by git.Generally, the global ignore file is use to ignore stuff like your IDE files / project fodlers, if you want to ignore some files in your home config, maybe you should create a
.gitignore
file in your home coonfig repository.I hope it'll help you ! :)
Based on a quick test on macOS, it appears that git only goes up the parent directory if there is a .git folder (a git repo).
I created a ~/.gitignore file with node_modules.
Then I created a project ~/Projects/scratch/testignore and added a folder node_modules. I tried
git status
and got the error: fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .gitWhen I ran
git init
thengit status
it showed node_modules as untracked. Once I added a .gitignore file, node_modules was ignored.So basically, you shouldn't have any issues with your ~/.gitignore file interfering with subdirectories as long as there is an intervening folder without a .git repo, like ~/Projects.
the problem is that it is only a test on the newest version. and i work on systems that are not only old debian but also not maintained by me — university systems. so i would have to test on each of these. i need an answer from someone familiar with git changelog in this aspect. there must have been some versions that did
~/.gitignore
, there is so much advisory posting mentioning itthanks for effort