148

I want to change the gitignore, but not everyone on the team wants these changes. How can a user have their own specific git ignore file?

asdsadasds
  • 1,483
  • 2
  • 9
  • 4
  • A very concise answer is actually provided in the [documentation](https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore#_description). – djvg Sep 27 '21 at 07:44

5 Answers5

157

You can create your own .gitignore using

git config --global core.excludesfile $HOME/.gitignore

Then put your desired entries in that file.

Pedro Romano
  • 10,519
  • 3
  • 42
  • 49
Dave Kincaid
  • 3,720
  • 3
  • 21
  • 31
  • 24
    If you don't want it to be global, you can put your `.user_gitignore` file under repo's `.git` directory and add it with `git config core.excludesfile .git/.user_gitignore` – orad Jan 28 '15 at 20:36
  • 8
    [Pro-tip from Tim Pope](https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen#faq): use `~/.cvsignore` because utilities like rsync will use this file as well. – Peter Rincker Mar 06 '15 at 17:57
  • 4
    @orad I think your comment deserves to be its own separate answer. – Stevoisiak Nov 07 '17 at 15:34
  • 3
    Take in account that orad's/Dave's suggestion will overwrite the default of `core.excludesfile` pointing to your global ignore file ie: `~/.gitignore`. If you want to preserve global exclusions and have repository specific exclusions as well, @grzuy's answer is the way to go – sgimeno Mar 01 '18 at 10:32
  • 1
    On Git for Windows, `$HOME/.gitignore` did not work correctly for me, but `~/.gitignore` did. – Soren Bjornstad Oct 28 '19 at 18:12
124

For user-specific and repo-specific file ignoring you should populate the following file: 

$GIT_DIR/info/exclude

Usually $GIT_DIR stands for: 

your_repo_path/.git/
grzuy
  • 4,393
  • 2
  • 19
  • 16
  • 9
    For those confused about the path: `your_repo/.git/info/exclude`. The file is formatted like a standard [.gitignore](https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore) file. – Stevoisiak Nov 07 '17 at 15:37
  • 7
    If your file already contains unstaged changes you may need to run `git update-index --skip-worktree [...]` (from https://hashrocket.com/blog/posts/ignore-specific-file-changes-only-on-current-machine-in-git) – Daniel Olivares Jan 17 '18 at 01:55
41

In their .gitconfig:

[core]
    excludesfile = ~/.global_gitignore

That way, they can ignore certain types of files globally. Each user can have their own global ignore file.

Rafe Kettler
  • 73,388
  • 19
  • 151
  • 149
7

For example, you want ignore ~/some/path/.idea folder:

# 1. Add .idea to user specific gitignore file
echo .idea > ~/.gitignore

# 2. Add gitignore file to gitconfig
git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore
Sergey Zhigalov
  • 901
  • 7
  • 3
5

As indicated in Atlassian's .gitignore tutorial, you could also use your repo's <repo>/.git/info/exclude file that you can easily edit with any text editor. It works the same as .gitignore.

I could easily ignore my intelliJ files, personal dockerfiles and stuff only I need to work with.

NickD
  • 5,088
  • 1
  • 18
  • 34
obscure18
  • 139
  • 4
  • 8
  • Yes! Edit the `exclude` file to get *repo specific* ignore of files or file patterns. Great for scripts that I want to use for that repo and _store_ in that repo, but don't want committed to the project at large, and don't want cluttering the `.gitignore` file that is shared by everybody. – Purplejacket Feb 08 '21 at 23:51