Ignoring Things

Last updated on 2023-09-18 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

How can I tell Git to ignore files I don’t want to track?

Objectives

Configure Git to ignore specific files.
Explain why ignoring files can be useful.

What if we have files that we do not want Git to track for us, like backup files created by our editor or intermediate files created during data analysis? Let’s create a few dummy files:

BASH

$ mkdir results
$ touch a.csv b.csv c.csv results/a.out results/b.out

and see what Git says:

BASH

$ git status

OUTPUT

On branch main
Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

	a.csv
	b.csv
	c.csv
	results/

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

Putting these files under version control would be a waste of disk space. What’s worse, having them all listed could distract us from changes that actually matter, so let’s tell Git to ignore them.

We do this by creating a file in the root directory of our project called .gitignore:

BASH

$ nano .gitignore
$ cat .gitignore

OUTPUT

*.csv
results/

These patterns tell Git to ignore any file whose name ends in .csv and everything in the results directory. (If any of these files were already being tracked, Git would continue to track them.)

Once we have created this file, the output of git status is much cleaner:

BASH

$ git status

OUTPUT

On branch main
Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

	.gitignore

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

The only thing Git notices now is the newly-created .gitignore file. You might think we wouldn’t want to track it, but everyone we’re sharing our repository with will probably want to ignore the same things that we’re ignoring. Let’s add and commit .gitignore:

BASH

$ git add .gitignore
$ git commit -m "Ignore data files and the results folder"
$ git status

OUTPUT

On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree clean

As a bonus, using .gitignore helps us avoid accidentally adding files to the repository that we don’t want to track:

BASH

$ git add a.csv

OUTPUT

The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files:
a.csv
Use -f if you really want to add them.

If we really want to override our ignore settings, we can use git add -f to force Git to add something. For example, git add -f a.csv. We can also always see the status of ignored files if we want:

BASH

$ git status --ignored

OUTPUT

On branch main
Ignored files:
 (use "git add -f <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

        a.csv
        b.csv
        c.csv
        results/

nothing to commit, working tree clean

Ignoring Nested Files

Given a directory structure that looks like:

BASH

results/data
results/plots

How would you ignore only results/plots and not results/data?

Show me the solution

If you only want to ignore the contents of results/plots, you can change your .gitignore to ignore only the /plots/ subfolder by adding the following line to your .gitignore:

OUTPUT

results/plots/

This line will ensure only the contents of results/plots is ignored, and not the contents of results/data.

As with most programming issues, there are a few alternative ways that one may ensure this ignore rule is followed. The “Ignoring Nested Files: Variation” exercise has a slightly different directory structure that presents an alternative solution. Further, the discussion page has more detail on ignore rules.

Including Specific Files

How would you ignore all .csv files in your root directory except for final.csv? Hint: Find out what ! (the exclamation point operator) does

Show me the solution

You would add the following two lines to your .gitignore:

OUTPUT

*.csv           # ignore all data files
!final.csv      # except final.csv

The exclamation point operator will include a previously excluded entry.

Note also that because you’ve previously committed .csv files in this lesson they will not be ignored with this new rule. Only future additions of .csv files added to the root directory will be ignored.

Ignoring Nested Files: Variation

Given a directory structure that looks similar to the earlier Nested Files exercise, but with a slightly different directory structure:

BASH

results/data
results/images
results/plots
results/analysis

How would you ignore all of the contents in the results folder, but not results/data?

Hint: think a bit about how you created an exception with the ! operator before.

Show me the solution

If you want to ignore the contents of results/ but not those of results/data/, you can change your .gitignore to ignore the contents of results folder, but create an exception for the contents of the results/data subfolder. Your .gitignore would look like this:

OUTPUT

results/*               # ignore everything in results folder
!results/data/          # do not ignore results/data/ contents

Ignoring all data Files in a Directory

Assuming you have an empty .gitignore file, and given a directory structure that looks like:

BASH

results/data/position/gps/a.csv
results/data/position/gps/b.csv
results/data/position/gps/c.csv
results/data/position/gps/info.txt
results/plots

What’s the shortest .gitignore rule you could write to ignore all .csv files in result/data/position/gps? Do not ignore the info.txt.

Show me the solution

Appending results/data/position/gps/*.csv will match every file in results/data/position/gps that ends with .csv. The file results/data/position/gps/info.txt will not be ignored.

Ignoring all data Files in the repository

Let us assume you have many .csv files in different subdirectories of your repository. For example, you might have:

BASH

results/a.csv
data/experiment_1/b.csv
data/experiment_2/c.csv
data/experiment_2/variation_1/d.csv

How do you ignore all the .csv files, without explicitly listing the names of the corresponding folders?

Show me the solution

In the .gitignore file, write:

OUTPUT

**/*.csv

This will ignore all the .csv files, regardless of their position in the directory tree. You can still include some specific exception with the exclamation point operator.

The Order of Rules

Given a .gitignore file with the following contents:

BASH

*.csv
!*.csv

What will be the result?

Show me the solution

The ! modifier will negate an entry from a previously defined ignore pattern. Because the !*.csv entry negates all of the previous .csv files in the .gitignore, none of them will be ignored, and all .csv files will be tracked.

Log Files

You wrote a script that creates many intermediate log-files of the form log_01, log_02, log_03, etc. You want to keep them but you do not want to track them through git.

Write one .gitignore entry that excludes files of the form log_01, log_02, etc.
Test your “ignore pattern” by creating some dummy files of the form log_01, etc.
You find that the file log_01 is very important after all, add it to the tracked files without changing the .gitignore again.
Discuss with your neighbor what other types of files could reside in your directory that you do not want to track and thus would exclude via .gitignore.

Show me the solution

append either log_* or log* as a new entry in your .gitignore
track log_01 using git add -f log_01

Key Points

The .gitignore file tells Git what files to ignore.