Git - Temporarily ignore trivial changes to files

Question

I\'m looking for a way to \'hide\' minor changes made to a few files in Git, such that they will not show up in git status until a different change is made to those files.

Answer 1

There are multiple ways [although may not be clean and neat and would require your attention]

1. Add the file in concern to .gitignore in your repo so that it doesn't show up for commit. Be careful to remove this from .gitignore when you are ready to commit the file
2. Ensure you do not 'stage' the file while committing rest of your changes. You may want to write a wrapper over git which will ensure commands like git commit -a or git add . run on all except the file under question. Another alternative would be to use git gui or git citool where you can visually ensure your file isn't in 'staged' area and hence never gets committed
3. Another way would be to commit all your 'committable' changes and then git stash save your only working file. Later when you are ready to change the file, you can git stash pop and continue working and committing.

Hope that helps :)