Gitignore all folders beginning with a period

cjm2671 picture cjm2671 · Apr 28, 2016 · Viewed 27k times · Source

I want to use a .gitignore file to ignore all folders beginning with a period (hidden folders of linux).

I can't figure out the syntax, though I'm sure it's simple.

How's it done?

Answer

CodeWizard picture CodeWizard · Apr 28, 2016

Use one of these patterns:

# ignore all . files but include . folders
.*
!.*/

# ignore all . files and . folders
.*

# Dont ignore .gitignore (this file)
# This is just for verbosity, you can leave it out if
# .gitignore is already tracked or if you use -f to
# force-add it if you just created it
!/.gitignore

# ignore all . folders but include . files
.*/

What is this pattern?

.* - This patter tells git to ignore all the files which starts with .

! - This tells git not to ignore the pattern. In your case /.gitignore

A demo can be found in this answer:
Git: how to ignore hidden files / dot files / files with empty file names via .gitignore?