991
votes

I want to set up Git to globally ignore certain files.

I have added a .gitignore file to my home directory (/Users/me/) and I have added the following line to it:

*.tmproj

But it is not ignoring this type of files, any idea what I am doing wrong?

12
You might also want to check out GitHub's ignore suggestions -- help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files; they have a repository of common ignore patternsdrzaus
You may also want to consider just using a .gitignore inside individual projects. Otherwise if you (or someone else) clone the project on a new system, you'll also have to recreate the global excludesfile and configuration each time.Stan Kurdziel
Ignorable files that the project creates should be in the project .gitignore file, ignorable files that stuff on your machine creates should go in the global .gitignore (like editor/IDE temp files and the like).Pylinux
Python virtual environment directories are a common use case for entries in my global or local excludesfile.Stew
@Pylinux Actually, per git-scm, personal IDE and workflow specific stuff can go in the untracked file .git/info/exclude in the repo, so it doesn't necessarily have to go in the global file. Also, the default and automatic global gitignore file is $HOME/.config/git/ignore.Asclepius

12 Answers

1646
votes

You need to set up your global core.excludesfile configuration file to point to this global ignore file.

e.g.

*nix or Windows git bash:

git config --global core.excludesFile '~/.gitignore'

Windows cmd:

git config --global core.excludesFile "%USERPROFILE%\.gitignore"

Windows PowerShell:

git config --global core.excludesFile "$Env:USERPROFILE\.gitignore"

For Windows it set to the location C:\Users\{myusername}\.gitignore. You can verify that the config value is correct by doing:

git config --global core.excludesFile

The result should be the expanded path to your user profile's .gitignore. Ensure that the value does not contain the unexpanded %USERPROFILE% string.

Important: The above commands will only set the location of the ignore file that git will use. The file has to still be manually created in that location and populated with the ignore list. (from muruge's comment)

You can read about the command at https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files/#create-a-global-gitignore

343
votes

Before reconfiguring the global excludes file, you might want to check what it's currently configured to, using this command:

git config --get core.excludesfile

In my case, when I ran it I saw my global excludes file was configured to

~/.gitignore_global
295
votes

Although other answers are correct they are setting the global config value whereas there is a default git location for the global git ignore file:

*nix:

~/.config/git/ignore

Windows:

%USERPROFILE%\git\ignore

You may need to create git directory and ignore file but then you can put your global ignores into that file and that's it!

Source

Which file to place a pattern in depends on how the pattern is meant to be used.

  • Patterns which a user wants Git to ignore in all situations (e.g., backup or temporary files generated by the user’s editor of choice) generally go into a file specified by core.excludesFile in the user’s ~/.gitconfig. Its default value is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or empty, $HOME/.config/git/ignore is used instead.
53
votes

To create global gitignore from scratch:

$ cd ~
$ touch .gitignore_global
$ git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore_global
  1. First line changes directory to C:/Users/User
  2. After that you create an empty file with .gitignore_global extension
  3. And finally setting global ignore to that file.
  4. Then you should open it with some kind of notepad and add the needed ignore rules.
26
votes
  1. Create a .gitignore file in your home directory
touch ~/.gitignore
  1. Add files/folders to it

Example

# Files
*.gz
*.tmproj
*.7z

# Folders
.vscode/
build/

# If folders don't work, you can still do this
.vscode/*
build/*
  1. Check if a git already has a global gitignore
git config --get core.excludesfile
  1. Tell git where the file is
git config --global core.excludesfile '~/.gitignore'

Voila!!

22
votes

From here.

If you create a file in your repo named .gitignore git will use its rules when looking at files to commit. 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

Is it your case ?

16
votes

If you use Unix system, you can solve your problem in two commands. Where the first initialize configs and the second alters file with a file to ignore.

$ git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore
$ echo '.idea' >> ~/.gitignore
9
votes

Remember that running the command

git config --global core.excludesfile '~/.gitignore'

will just set up the global file, but will NOT create it. For Windows check your Users directory for the .gitconfig file, and edit it to your preferences. In my case It's like that:

[core]
  excludesfile = c:/Users/myuser/Dropbox/Apps/Git/.gitignore
4
votes

I am able to ignore a .tmproj file by including either .tmproj or *.tmproj in my /users/me/.gitignore-global file.

Note that the file name is .gitignore-global not .gitignore. It did not work by including .tmproj or *.tmproj in a file called .gitignore in the /users/me directory.

2
votes

You should create an exclude file for this. Check out this gist which is pretty self explanatory.

To address your question though, you may need to either de-index the .tmproj file (if you've already added it to the index) with git rm --cached path/to/.tmproj, or git add and commit your .gitignore file.

2
votes

on windows subsystem for linux I had to navigate to the subsystem root by cd ~/ then touch .gitignore and then update the global gitignore configuration in there.

I hope it helps someone.

0
votes

If you're using VSCODE, you can get this extension to handle the task for you. It watches your workspace each time you save your work and helps you to automatically ignore the files and folders you specified in your vscode settings.json ignoreit (vscode extension)