.gitignore file in Sourcetree not working

Question

I am working on a maven project and I want to ignore the files generated and stored in the /target folder of my project (Evaluation) root folder.In the root of my git repository I have a .gitignore file with the following entries (backend is just a folder which contains the eclipse project Evaluation)

backend/Evaluation/logs/
backend/Evaluation/target/

For some reason SourceTree does not ignore the files stored in these two folders and when I compile my project there are some uncommitted changes which are some .class files inside the /target folder.

Why is this happening ? I also tried to change the .gitignore entries to

/backend/Evaluation/logs/**

but it did not work too.

Any ideas ?

Answer 1

Because there is the Sourcetree tag in the question I will answer you how to do this with Sourcetree, it's really simple.

As said before you first have to remove the file from tracking and then make Sourcetree to ignore the file.

1. Change something in the file so that it is shown to you or select it from the "file status" tab at the bottom of the open repository.
2. Right click on the file and you see "Ignore...", but it is grayed out because as said above its already in track.
3. Right click on the file and chose "Stop Tracking"
4. The file will be shown with a red button which indicates it will be removed (from tracking)
5. A new entry of the same file will be shown in "file status" with a blue question mark indicates a new file (new because you said remove from tracking in 4)
6. Right click on the file from 5 and now you see the "Ignore..." is able to choose. Click on it and Sourcetree will put a new entry for the file in the .gitignore file
7. You can see the .gitignore file if you click on "Setting" on the top right, choose "advanced" and then the first entry is about the ignore file, click on "edit" and it will be open.