Github - gitignore folder doesn't exclude all directory files - gitignore

I'm using Github Desktop on Windows 10. I have a .gitignore file with which I'd like to ignore everything in the directory, including all subdirectories.
What's frustrating is that most files are excluded, but I'm still getting a few random files that I cannot seem to ignore.
I have a directory, say, My Dir/Sub-dir, I want to ignore. I also want to ignore all files of extension, say, *.swf. Thus, I write this .gitignore file:
My Dir/Sub-dir
*.swf
But, when I go back to Github Desktop, I still get two files similar to the following in the list:
My Dir/Sub-dir/anotherdir/randomfile.xml
My Dir/Sub-dir/animation.swf
What's going on? Is this a bug? Or am I missing something?
EDIT:
Other alternative .gitignores I've tried are:
My*Dir/Sub-dir
*.swf
My\ Dir/Sub-dir
*.swf
My Dir/Sub-dir/
*.swf
/My Dir/Sub-dir
*.swf
EDIT:
So, I've tried the git rm --cached <file> command on my files, and it worked - until one of the files changes again. Github Desktop then once again says they need to be updated.
p.s. It may be that they somehow got indexed in the master branch, as I'm currently in a different branch. Would this cause it? And, if so, how would I eliminate these files from all branches?

To ignore all trees under specific directories, append the trailing slash to the directory:
# Ignore directory at all levels, even if the directory is nested under other directories
My Dir/Sub-dir/
# Ignore the directory only if it exists at the root of your repository
/My Dir/Sub-dir/
# Ignore the sub-directory, no matter where it appears within your repository
Sub-dir/
# Ignore all swf files
*.swf
If you are continuing to experience difficulties, your problem may be that the files you wish to ignore are already indexed by git (via the git add command). If the files are not committed yet, you can remove them from the index with git reset -- 'My Dir/Sub-dir/'. If your files have been committed, you can remove them from the index with git rm --cached <file>.

I guess the whitespace could be a problem. Try
My\ Dir/Sub-dir
or
My*Dir/Sub-dir
This could be a good reference .gitignore entire directory with whitespace in name

Related

Why doesn't this ignore my files recursively?

In my project's root directory there are directories like 'tools':
tools/evaluate/test/
tools/evaluate2
Under test, there are some .py and .csv files. I want to ignore all files except .py, so in my .gitignore, I have this entry:
!tools/**/*.py
I want to recursively ignore all non-python files under tools. What's wrong with that?
if the files you are trying to ignore have been already committed, you need to remove them from the staging area as well, that's done by:
git rm --cached !tools/**/*.py
check the status:
git status
add the files you want to delete to .gitignore i assume manually, i don't know of an automatic way, then finally:
git add .gitignore
git commit -m "Remove unused files"
Two parts are needed here:
# Recursively ignore everything in tools that has an extension:
**/tools/**/*.*
# Except .py files recursively in tools:
!tools/**/*.py

How to use gitignore with asterisks? [duplicate]

I have a directory structure like this:
.git/
.gitignore
main/
...
tools/
...
...
Inside main and tools, and any other directory, at any level, there can be a 'bin' directory, which I want to ignore (and I want to ignore everything under it too). I've tried each of these patterns in .gitignore but none of them work:
/**/bin/**/*
/./**/bin/**/*
./**/bin/**/*
**/bin/**/*
*/bin/**/*
bin/**/*
/**/bin/* #and the others with just * at the end too
Can anyone help me out? The first pattern (the one I think should be working) works just fine if I do this:
/main/**/bin/**/*
But I don't want to have an entry for every top-level directory and I don't want to have to modify .gitignore every time I add a new one.
This is on Windows using the latest msysgit.
EDIT: one more thing, there are files and directories that have the substring 'bin' in their names, I don't want those to be ignored :)
Before version 1.8.2, ** didn't have any special meaning in the .gitignore. As of 1.8.2 git supports ** to mean zero or more sub-directories (see release notes).
The way to ignore all directories called bin anywhere below the current level in a directory tree is with a .gitignore file with the pattern:
bin/
In the man page, there an example of ignoring a directory called foo using an analogous pattern.
Edit:
If you already have any bin folders in your git index which you no longer wish to track then you need to remove them explicitly. Git won't stop tracking paths that are already being tracked just because they now match a new .gitignore pattern. Execute a folder remove (rm) from index only (--cached) recursivelly (-r). Command line example for root bin folder:
git rm -r --cached bin
The .gitignore of your dream seems to be:
bin/
on the top level.
I think it is worth to mention for git beginners:
If you already have a file checked in, and you want to ignore it, Git
will not ignore the file if you add a rule later. In those cases, you
must untrack the file first, by running the following command in your
terminal:
git rm --cached
So if you want add to ignore some directories in your local repository (which already exist) after editing .gitignore you want to run this on your root dir
git rm --cached -r .
git add .
It will basically 'refresh' your local repo and unstage ignored files.
See:
http://git-scm.com/docs/git-rm,
https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files/
The ** never properly worked before, but since git 1.8.2 (March, 8th 2013), it seems to be explicitly mentioned and supported:
The patterns in .gitignore and .gitattributes files can have **/, as a pattern that matches 0 or more levels of subdirectory.
E.g. "foo/**/bar" matches "bar" in "foo" itself or in a subdirectory of "foo".
In your case, that means this line might now be supported:
/main/**/bin/
[Bb]in/
matches both upper and lower case
I didn't see it mentioned here, but this appears to be case sensitive. Once I changed to /Bin the files were ignored as expected.
Step 1: Add following content to the file .gitignore.
# User-specific files
*.suo
*.user
*.userosscache
*.sln.docstates
# Build results
[Dd]ebug/
[Dd]ebugPublic/
[Rr]elease/
[Rr]eleases/
x64/
x86/
bld/
[Bb]in/
[Oo]bj/
# Visual Studio 2015 cache/options directory
.vs/
Step 2: Make sure take effect
If the issue still exists, that's because settings in .gitignore can only ignore files that were originally not tracked. If some files have already been included in the version control system, then modifying .gitignore is invalid.
To solve this issue completely, you need to open Git Bash or Package Manager Console (see screenshot below) to run following commands in the repository root folder.
git rm -r --cached .
git add .
git commit -m "Update .gitignore"
Then the issue will be completely solved.
[Bb]in will solve the problem, but...
Here a more extensive list of things you should ignore (sample list by GitExtension):
#ignore thumbnails created by windows
Thumbs.db
#Ignore files build by Visual Studio
*.user
*.aps
*.pch
*.vspscc
*_i.c
*_p.c
*.ncb
*.suo
*.bak
*.cache
*.ilk
*.log
[Bb]in
[Dd]ebug*/
*.sbr
obj/
[Rr]elease*/
_ReSharper*/
If you're looking for a great global .gitignore file for any Visual Studio ( .NET ) solution - I recommend you to use this one: https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/VisualStudio.gitignore
AFAIK it has the most comprehensive .gitignore for .NET projects.
Literally none of the answers actually worked for me; the only one that worked for me was (on Linux):
**/bin
(yes without the / in the end)
git version 2.18.0
for 2.13.3 and onwards,writing just bin in your .gitignore file should ignore the bin and all its subdirectories and files
bin
As a notice;
If you think about .gitignore does not work in a way (so added foo/* folder in it but git status still showing that folder content(s) as modified or something like this), then you can use this command;
git checkout -- foo/*
Adding **/bin/ to the .gitignore file did the trick for me (Note: bin folder wasn't added to index).
In addition to #CB Bailey's answer:
I tried to remove multiple folders (in subfolders) named et-cache (caching folder from Wordpress divi theme) from the index and from being tracked.
I added
et-cache/
to the .gitignore file. But
git rm -r --cached et-cache
resulted in an error:
fatal: pathspec 'et-cache' did not match any files
So the solution was to use powershell:
Get-ChildItem et-cache -Recurse |% {git rm -r --cached $_.FullName}
This searches for all subfolders named et-cache. Each of the folders path (fullname) is then used to remove it from tracking in git.
If the pattern inside .gitignore ends with a slash /, it will only find a match with a directory.
In other words, bin/ will match a directory bin and paths underneath it, but will not match a regular file or a symbolic link bin.
If the pattern does not contain a slash, like in bin Git treats it as a shell glob pattern (greedy). So best would be to use simple /bin.
bin would not be the best solution for this particular problem.
In my case encoding of gitignore file was problematic, check if it is UTF-8

Too many active changes git warnings

i made a clean installation of visual studio code. Why do i get those warnings about Git 99+ warnings. How should i fix this ?
Those are Atom IDE generated files.
Add this to the .gitignore file:
.atom/
If the file not exists, create one in the root of the repository
It looks like you just forgot to ignore all of the generated files in your git directory. You need to find the directory and add it to your .gitignore file. Lets say the directory name is node_modules, so your .gitignore file content should be something like this
node_modules/
Using this way, those all active changes files will be ignored.
If a user sees that message it is most likely, that his git repository root is at the different directory, and probably is at the much higher directory (comparing to his/her repo). It can be checked by running:
git rev-parse --show-toplevel
If that's the case, then deleting hidden folder .git from this higher directory will solve the case.

gitignore misses some binary files (DLLs & PEs)

I use the latest version of Github Desktop. My repo consist of a rather large C# solution with many sub-directories and projects. I'd like to ignore all R#-cache files and compiled binaries using the .gitignore file which resides in the root directory of the local repo directory. There are no other gitignore's anywhere in this repo and none in any parent directories. My current gitignore is this:
*.suo
*.user
_ReSharper.*
bin
obj
packages
*.cache
*.pdb
*.dll
*.exe
*.xml
When I made my changes, recompiled and tested everything, I open Github Desktop. It catches almost all files that should be ignored, only some .dlls, .pdbs and .exes are not ignored and always show up as changed:
Now, there are way more binary files in this repo. Only the specific ones in the screengrab are missed.
Is this fixable, and/or can the gitignore be altered to catch all files that it should catch?
Here's what I tried:
Removed and re-cloned the repository
Removed and manually re-created the gitignore
Right-click->Ignore by file extension from within the GitHub Desktop client. This does not work, worse, it creates duplicate masks in the gitignore
Checked for conflicting gitignore's in directories accessible by Github Desktop
Maybe you have files that were already being tracked by git before you modified the .gitignore? Those files (at least in git 1.9.1) aren't ignored when added to a .gitignore.
For example, I created a "test" directory at the root file one of my repos and put a file in it:
mkdir test
echo "abc" > test/x.txt
I added, committed and pushed it. Then I edited .gitignore at the root and added this line:
x.txt
I also made an edit to test/x.txt AND added a new file:
echo "123" >> test/x.txt
mkdir test2
echo "xyz" > test2/x.txt
Now when I run "git status" I see:
modified: .gitignore
modified: test/x.txt
So test2/x.txt is being properly ignored, but test/x.txt is still being tracked.
To force the file to be ignored, you can delete it, add & commit the deletion together with the .gitignore change, then restore the file.

important files are not in list , all some files go in untract files list?

I am using a Git Repository to manage my project,
Now when i try to commit i see there are some impoertant file like content/image , scripts , etc files in untrack files
Why?
Is there any way to resolve this?
Regards,
vinit
You have to use "git add [wildcard or directory or file(s)]" first to add your files to the versioning system GIT. Manual page is here: https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-add.html
And the git book is worth a read.
Also I liked gitready very much.
Happy coding
If your Git repo has been initialized on GitHub (and then cloned), it is likely to come with a .gitignore (as well as a README.md, and even a LICENSE file).
Check if those files aren't ignored by the rules in the .gitignore.
You can do that with:
git check-ignore -v scripts
You can edit that file to remove the rules you don't want, then a git add . will add:
the modified .gitignore files
the files that were previously ignored.