| 8 | Ignoring Files |
Software projects generate a lot of cruft. Some of it you don’t
need to commit. For example, I do a lot of work in Python, which
leaves a ton of .pyc files laying around, and I
edit using MacVim, which creates a swap file for each file that
you’re editing. We don’t need or want these files cluttering up
our repository or showing up in git
status. That’s where the
.gitignore and friends comes in.
Each line of the .gitignore is scanned, and any
matches it finds are ignored by Git. Your
.gitignore file is inside your repository, so
you can track it like any other file. You can put it at the top
level of your repository, and in that case the rules cascade
through all subdirectories. You can also use subdirectory-specific