using gitignore to ignore (but not delete) files

Question

I have a tmp directory in my git repo I\'d like to still exist, but be ignored. I added it to .gitignore, but git status still tells me about chan

Answer 1

Ignoring changes made to files while allowing them to exist is the exact purpose of .gitignore. So adding the files (or directories) to .gitignore is the only thing you have to do.

But your problem is that git is already tracking the files you want to ignore and .gitignore doesn't apply to tracked files. The only way to stop this tracking is to tell git to remove them. By using git rm --cached, you prevent git from deleting your local files, but any other repository getting your changes will apply the removal. I don't think there's a way to avoid that from your own repository. You must do something on the other repositories, or accept the files will be removed.

To prevent the removal on each other repository you can:

• (obviously) backup the files somewhere, pull the changes and restore the files,
• or also git rm --cached the files and commit before pulling your changes. Git will nicely merge the two removals without touching the already untracked files.