Gitignore

Git · Reference cheat sheet

📖 Overview

.gitignore lists patterns Git should treat as untracked noise (build output, deps, secrets, OS junk). Patterns apply to untracked files; already-tracked files stay tracked until removed from the index.

🧩 Core concepts

• Pattern syntax — globs (*.log), directories (dist/), negation (!important.log).
• Scoped rules — root .gitignore, nested ignores, and global core.excludesFile.
• / anchoring — leading / anchors to the file’s directory; trailing / means directory.
• ** recursion — matches across directories depending on position.
• Check-ignore — debug why a path is ignored.
• Un-ignore tracked files — git rm -r --cached then commit.

💡 Examples

# Dependencies & build
node_modules/
dist/
build/
*.tsbuildinfo

# Env & secrets
.env
.env.*
!.env.example

# Logs & caches
*.log
.cache/
.coverage/

# OS / IDE
.DS_Store
Thumbs.db
.idea/
.vscode/*
!.vscode/extensions.json

# Test a path
git check-ignore -v path/to/file

# Stop tracking without deleting the file
git rm -r --cached node_modules
git rm --cached .env
git commit -m "chore: stop tracking local env and deps"

# Global ignores
git config --global core.excludesFile ~/.gitignore_global

⚠️ Pitfalls

• Ignoring after git add does nothing until you untrack with --cached.
• Negation (!) cannot re-include a file inside an ignored parent directory easily — un-ignore parents carefully.
• Committing .env once leaves secrets in history — rotate keys and consider history rewrite/BFG.
• Over-broad * patterns can hide files you meant to commit.

🔗 Related

• Gitattributes
• Stage
• Commit
• Git LFS
• GH CLI