git-ignore - Man Page

Add .gitignore patterns

Examples (TL;DR)

Show the content of all global and local .gitignore files: git ignore
Ignore file(s) privately, updating .git/info/exclude file: git ignore file_pattern --private
Ignore file(s) locally, updating local .gitignore file: git ignore file_pattern
Ignore file(s) globally, updating global .gitignore file: git ignore file_pattern --global

tldr.sh

Synopsis

git-ignore [<context>] [<pattern> [<pattern>]...]

Description

Adds the given _pattern_s to a .gitignore file if it doesn´t already exist.

Options

-l, --local: Sets the context to the .gitignore file in the current working directory. (default)
-g, --global: Sets the context to the global gitignore file for the current user.
-p, --private: Sets the context to the private exclude file for the repository (.git/info/exclude).

A space delimited list of patterns to append to the file in context.

Pattern Format

Pattern format as described in the git manual

A blank line matches no files, so it can serve as a separator for readability. To append a blank line use empty quotes "".
A line starting with # serves as a comment. For example, "# This is a comment"
An optional prefix ! which negates the pattern; any matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will override lower precedence patterns sources. To use an exclamation ! as command line argument it is best placed between single quotes ´´. For example, ´!src´
If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the purpose of the following description, but it would only find a match with a directory. In other words, foo/ will match a directory foo and paths underneath it, but will not match a regular file or a symbolic link foo (this is consistent with the way how pathspec works in general in git).
If the pattern does not contain a slash /, git treats it as a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the pathname relative to the location of the .gitignore file (relative to the top level of the work tree if not from a .gitignore file).
Otherwise, git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable for consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag: wildcards in the pattern will not match a / in the pathname. For example, "Documentation/*.html" matches "Documentation/git.html" but not "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html" or "tools/perf/Documentation/perf.html".
A leading slash matches the beginning of the pathname. For example, "/*.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c".

Examples

All arguments are optional so calling git-ignore alone will display first the global then the local gitignore files:

$ git ignore
Global gitignore: /home/alice/.gitignore
# Numerous always-ignore extensions
*.diff
*.err
*.orig
*.rej
*.swo
*.swp
*.vi
*~
*.sass-cache

# OS or Editor folders
Thumbs.db
---------------------------------
Local gitignore: .gitignore
nbproject

If you only want to see the global context use the --global argument (for local use --local):

$ git ignore
Global gitignore: /home/alice/.gitignore
Thumbs.db

To quickly append a new pattern to the default/local context simply:

$ git ignore *.log
Adding pattern(s) to: .gitignore

You can now configure any patterns without ever using an editor, with a context and pattern arguments: The resulting configuration is also returned for your convenience.

$ git ignore --local "" "# Temporary files" *.tmp "*.log" tmp/*  "" "# Files I´d like to keep" ´!work´  ""
Adding pattern(s) to: .gitignore

Local gitignore: .gitignore

# Temporary files
index.tmp
*.log

# Files I´d like to keep
!work