Committing Machine Specific Configuration Files

Question

A common scenario when I develop is that the codebase will have several config files which require machine specific settings. These files will be checked into Git and other

Answer 1

You can try git update-index --skip-worktree filename . This will tell git to pretend that local changes to filename don't exist, so git commit -a will ignore it. It has the added advantage of also resisting git reset --hard, so you won't accidentally lose your local changes. Also, automatic merges will fail gracefully if the file is changed upstream (unless the working directory copy matches the index copy, in which case it will be automatically updated). The downside is the command has to be run on all machines involved, and it's difficult to do this automatically. See also git update-index --assume-unchanged for a subtly different version of this idea. Details on both can be found with git help update-index .