Comments in .gitignore?

638
votes

Can you write comments in a .gitignore file?

If so, should the line be preceded with a # or some other indicator?

2
gitcommentsgitignore
If you use an editor that knows about these things (e.g. Vim), the lines commented with # will be formatted appropriately - easy to discover yourself that way! – Cascabel
So you are looking for a .gitignoreignore? – daviewales

2 Answers

790
votes

Yes, you may put comments in there. They however must start at the beginning of a line.

cf. http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Basics-Recording-Changes-to-the-Repository#Ignoring-Files

The rules for the patterns you can put in the .gitignore file are as follows:
- Blank lines or lines starting with # are ignored.
[…]

The comment character is #, example:

# no .a files
*.a
240
votes

Do git help gitignore

You will get the help page with following line:

A line starting with # serves as a comment.