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Gitignore

Adding a .gitignore into an exiting repository

  1. Create a .gitignore file within your repo using the touch command:

    • touch .gitignore

  2. Commit all your pending changes using

  3. Then run this command, which removes everything from index:

    • git rm -r --cached .

Note

The git rm command deletes files both from the Git repository as well as the filesystem. Using the cached flag, the actual file on disk will not be deleted.

  1. Then just stage all the files again by running:

    • git add .

  2. Next Commit the staged changes, using:

    • git commit -m ".gitignore is now working"

  3. Finally push the commit to your repo:

    • git push origin /<master/branch_name/>

Caution

Please be careful, when you push this to a repository and pull from somewhere else into a state where those files are still tracked, the files will be DELETED.

References

📌 Stackoverflow: Apply .gitignore on an existing repository already tracking large number of files