gitignore

I just created a Github repository and was wondering what the .gitignore file was for. I started by not creating one, but added one due to the fact that most repositories have one. Do I need to have one? Can/do I just ignore it, or does it have a use? I did some research on the subject but couldn't find a concrete explanation. .gitignore tells git which files (or patterns) it should ignore. It's usually used to avoid committing transient files from your working directory that aren't useful to other collaborators, such as compilation products, temporary files IDEs create, etc. You can find the

I have some files in my repository that should be ignored, i added them to the .gitignore but, of course, they are not removed from my repository. So my question is, is there a magic command or script using filter-branch that can rewrite my history and remove all these files easily? Or simply a command that will create a commit that will remove them ? You can remove them from the repository manually: git rm --cached file1 file2 dir/file3 Or, if you have a lot of files: git rm --cached `git ls-files -i --exclude-from=.gitignore` But this doesn't seem to work in Git Bash on Windows. It produces

I am aware of using .gitignore file to exclude some files being added, but I have several config.php files in source tree and I need to exclude only one, located in the root while other keep under revision control. What I should write into .gitignore to make this happen? From the documentation : If the pattern does not contain a slash /, git treats it as a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the pathname relative to the location of the .gitignore file (relative to the toplevel of the work tree if not from a .gitignore file). A leading slash matches the beginning of the pathname.

My issue is that I have a bunch of WordPress websites in my git repo, of which I want to selectively commit only the content of my themes folders, while ignoring the rest of the redundant files found in WordPress. I've used .gitignore files to ignore file types before, but can it be used the other way around- that is to ignore everything BUT a certain folder path? root (git repo) - / wordpress - - / (WordPress Site 1)/wp-content/themes - - / (WordPress Site 2)/wp-content/themes - - / (WordPress Site 3)/wp-content/themes Thanks- UPDATE: Based on the answers I did the following, but it's not

I am attempting to use a .gitignore file with negated patterns (lines starting with !), but it's not working the way I expect. As a minimal example, I have the folllowing directory structure: C:/gittest -- .gitignore -- aaa/ -- bbb/ -- file.txt -- ccc/ -- otherfile.txt and in my gitignore file, I have this: aaa/ !aaa/ccc/ My understanding (based on this doc page ) is that the file aaa/ccc/otherfile.txt should not be ignored, but in fact git is ignoring everything under aaa. Am I misunderstanding this sentence: "An optional prefix ! which negates the pattern; any matching file excluded by a