Using .gitignore

Question

I am having trouble with my .gitignore. I have a directory tree like so:

/djangoproject
    venv
        bin
            startgunicorn.sh
        djo
    www
        static
        analytics
    .git
        .gitignore

My .gitignore reads:

../www/analytics
../venv/bin
../venv/build
../venv/include
../venv/lib
../venv/local
*.pyc

When I

git add ../* or git add -A

git push

I don't want startgunicorn.sh or my analytics dir to be pushed, but I do want djo and static to be. That's not happening—my gunicorn.sh file keeps changing to the local machine's. Where is my error?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 05 '13 at 14:08

I've never seen anyone place a .gitignore file in the .git subdirectory before. As far as I know, it should be in the root if you wish to apply the rules to the entire repository.

GitHub say the following:

Note that you can create a .gitignore in any subpath to have its rules applied at that path. Sometimes an empty .gitignore file is used as a placeholder for an empty path, for example to force git to generate a log/ path for your development environment to use.

Going by that logic, all those rules will all be applied from the .git folder downwards. I can see what you're trying to do, but I've never seen it done before that way.

I would put the .gitignore in the root of the repository, and have it look like this:

www/analytics
venv/bin
venv/build
venv/include
venv/lib
venv/local
*.pyc

I'd expect that to do the right thing.

In addition, it is worth bearing this in mind:

Note that git will not ignore a file that was already tracked before a rule was added to this file to ignore it. In such a case the file must be un-tracked, usually with git rm --cached filename

You will possibly need to do that, if you've added older versions of those files you wish to ignore.

Late to the party but for those following along at home, starting with git 1.8.2, `**` can be used to ignore all files in a folder up to infinite depth. E.g., `venv/**`. See [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1470572/gitignore-ignore-any-bin-directory). — franklin, Oct 25 '15 at 15:55

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 05 '13 at 14:11

0

Maybe try placing .gitignore in main project's directory (where .git directory is) and removing "../" at beginings of paths.

If that doesn't help try adding

venv/bin/*

to your .gitignore.

answered Aug 05 '13 at 14:11

Tomasz Posłuszny

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Using .gitignore

2 Answers2