Provided by:
git-core_1.5.4.3-1ubuntu2_i386 
NAME
gitignore - Specifies intentionally untracked files to ignore
SYNOPSIS
$GIT_DIR/info/exclude, .gitignore
DESCRIPTION
A gitignore file specifies intentionally untracked files that git
should ignore. Each line in a gitignore file specifies a pattern.
When deciding whether to ignore a path, git normally checks gitignore
patterns from multiple sources, with the following order of precedence,
from highest to lowest (within one level of precedence, the last
matching pattern decides the outcome):
· Patterns read from the command line for those commands that support
them.
· Patterns read from a .gitignore file in the same directory as the
path, or in any parent directory, with patterns in the higher level
files (up to the root) being overridden by those in lower level
files down to the directory containing the file. These patterns
match relative to the location of the .gitignore file. A project
normally includes such .gitignore files in its repository,
containing patterns for files generated as part of the project
build.
· Patterns read from $GIT_DIR/info/exclude.
· Patterns read from the file specified by the configuration variable
core.excludesfile.
The underlying git plumbing tools, such as git-ls-files(1) and git-
read-tree(1), read gitignore patterns specified by command-line
options, or from files specified by command-line options. Higher-level
git tools, such as git-status(1) and git-add(1), use patterns from the
sources specified above.
Patterns have the following format:
· A blank line matches no files, so it can serve as a separator for
readability.
· A line starting with # serves as a comment.
· An optional prefix ! which negates the pattern; any matching file
excluded by a previous pattern will become included again. If a
negated pattern matches, this will override lower precedence
patterns sources.
· If the pattern does not contain a slash /, git treats it as a shell
glob pattern and checks for a match against the pathname without
leading directories.
· Otherwise, git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable for
consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag: wildcards in
the pattern will not match a / in the pathname. For example,
"Documentation/*.html" matches "Documentation/git.html" but not
"Documentation/ppc/ppc.html". A leading slash matches the beginning
of the pathname; for example, "/*.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not
"mozilla-sha1/sha1.c".
An example:
$ git-status
[...]
# Untracked files:
[...]
# Documentation/foo.html
# Documentation/gitignore.html
# file.o
# lib.a
# src/internal.o
[...]
$ cat .git/info/exclude
# ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree.
*.[oa]
$ cat Documentation/.gitignore
# ignore generated html files,
*.html
# except foo.html which is maintained by hand
!foo.html
$ git-status
[...]
# Untracked files:
[...]
# Documentation/foo.html
[...]
Another example:
$ cat .gitignore
vmlinux*
$ ls arch/foo/kernel/vm*
arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
$ echo ´!/vmlinux*´ >arch/foo/kernel/.gitignore
The second .gitignore prevents git from ignoring
arch/foo/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S.
DOCUMENTATION
Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano, Josh Triplett, Frank
Lichtenheld, and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
GIT
Part of the git(7) suite