# gitignore(5) Manual Page

## NAME

gitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore

## SYNOPSIS

$GIT_DIR/info/exclude, .gitignore

## DESCRIPTION

A `gitignore` file specifies intentionally untracked files that git should ignore. Each line in a `gitignore` file specifies a pattern.

When deciding whether to ignore a path, git normally checks `gitignore` patterns from multiple sources, with the following order of precedence:

- Patterns read from the file specified by the configuration variable core.excludesfile.

- Patterns read from `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude`.

- Patterns read from a `.gitignore` file in the same directory as the path, or in any parent directory, ordered from the deepest such file to a file in the root of the repository. These patterns match relative to the location of the `.gitignore` file. A project normally includes such `.gitignore` files in its repository, containing patterns for files generated as part of the project build.

The underlying git plumbing tools, such as git-ls-files(1) and git-read-tree(1), read `gitignore` patterns specified by command-line options, or from files specified by command-line options. Higher-level git tools, such as git-status(1) and git-add(1), use patterns from the sources specified above.

Patterns have the following format:

- A blank line matches no files, so it can serve as a separator for readability.

- A line starting with # serves as a comment.

- An optional prefix ! which negates the pattern; any matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become included again.

- If the pattern does not contain a slash /, git treats it as a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the pathname without leading directories.

- 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". A leading slash matches the beginning of the pathname; for example, "/*.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c".

An example:

        $ git-status
        [...]
        # Untracked files:
        [...]
        #       Documentation/foo.html
        #       Documentation/gitignore.html
        #       file.o
        #       lib.a
        #       src/internal.o
        [...]
        $ cat .git/info/exclude
        # ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree.
        *.[oa]
        $ cat Documentation/.gitignore
        # ignore generated html files,
        *.html
        # except foo.html which is maintained by hand
        !foo.html
        $ git-status
        [...]
        # Untracked files:
        [...]
        #       Documentation/foo.html
        [...]

Another example:

        $ cat .gitignore
        vmlinux*
        $ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm*
        arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
        $ echo '!/vmlinux*' >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore

The second .gitignore prevents git from ignoring `arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S`.

## Documentation

Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano, Josh Triplett, Frank Lichtenheld, and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.

## GIT

Part of the git(7) suite