NAME

       hgignore - syntax for Mercurial ignore files

SYNOPSIS

       The Mercurial system uses a file called .hgignore in the root directory of a repository to
       control its behavior when it searches for files that it is not currently tracking.

DESCRIPTION

       The working directory of a Mercurial repository will often contain files that  should  not
       be  tracked by Mercurial. These include backup files created by editors and build products
       created by compilers.  These files can be ignored by listing them in a .hgignore  file  in
       the  root  of  the  working  directory. The .hgignore file must be created manually. It is
       typically put under version  control,  so  that  the  settings  will  propagate  to  other
       repositories with push and pull.

       An untracked file is ignored if its path relative to the repository root directory, or any
       prefix path of that path, is matched against any pattern in .hgignore.

       For example, say we have an untracked file, file.c, at a/b/file.c inside  our  repository.
       Mercurial will ignore file.c if any pattern in .hgignore matches a/b/file.c, a/b or a.

       In  addition,  a  Mercurial  configuration  file can reference a set of per-user or global
       ignore files. See the ignore configuration key on the [ui] section of hg  help  config for
       details of how to configure these files.

       To control Mercurial's handling of files that it manages, many commands support the -I and
       -X options; see hg help <command> and hg help patterns for details.

       Files that are already tracked are not affected by  .hgignore,  even  if  they  appear  in
       .hgignore.  An  untracked file X can be explicitly added with hg add X, even if X would be
       excluded by a pattern in .hgignore.

SYNTAX

       An ignore file is a plain text file consisting of a list of patterns, with one pattern per
       line.  Empty lines are skipped. The # character is treated as a comment character, and the
       \ character is treated as an escape character.

       Mercurial supports several pattern syntaxes. The default syntax used is  Python/Perl-style
       regular expressions.

       To change the syntax used, use a line of the following form:

       syntax: NAME

       where NAME is one of the following:

       regexp

              Regular expression, Python/Perl syntax.

       glob

              Shell-style glob.

       The  chosen  syntax  stays  in effect when parsing all patterns that follow, until another
       syntax is selected.

       Neither glob nor regexp patterns are rooted. A glob-syntax pattern of the  form  *.c  will
       match  a file ending in .c in any directory, and a regexp pattern of the form \.c$ will do
       the same. To root a regexp pattern, start it with ^.

       Note   Patterns specified in other than .hgignore are always rooted.  Please see  hg  help
              patterns for details.

EXAMPLE

       Here is an example ignore file.

       # use glob syntax.
       syntax: glob

       *.elc
       *.pyc
       *~

       # switch to regexp syntax.
       syntax: regexp
       ^\.pc/

AUTHOR

       Vadim Gelfer <vadim.gelfer@gmail.com>

       Mercurial was written by Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>.

SEE ALSO

       hg(1), hgrc(5)

COPYING

       This  manual  page  is copyright 2006 Vadim Gelfer.  Mercurial is copyright 2005-2013 Matt
       Mackall.  Free use of this software is granted under the terms of the GNU  General  Public
       License version 2 or any later version.

AUTHOR

       Vadim Gelfer <vadim.gelfer@gmail.com>

       Organization: Mercurial

                                                                                      HGIGNORE(5)