.gitignore Generator

Those templates are excellent but each is its own file. For a single repo you usually want a hand-picked combination of three or four — that's what this tool lets you assemble quickly.

Probably some — secret config files, local caches, build outputs of niche tools. Treat the output as a baseline and add a # Local section at the bottom for anything else.

Ignore rules only apply to files git is not already tracking. Once a file is in the index, git keeps recording changes to it no matter what the ignore file says. Remove it from tracking first (git rm --cached path, which leaves the file on disk) and commit that removal; from then on the rule takes effect.

Later rules override earlier ones, so a negation pattern can re-include something an earlier rule excluded — but not if one of its parent directories is excluded, because git never looks inside an ignored directory. Exclude the contents rather than the directory itself when you need an exception below it.