Ignore .classpath and .project from Git

Question

I keep myself telling me and others not to commit .classpath and .project files and use Maven.

Somehow, Junior developers always ignore certain rules and commits those files and it's much better to have such files for newbies who can jump and start using the code.

Now from myside, I would like to try/do something. When I clone the repo, I will get .classpath and .project files and certainly they get modified in my system.

But I want them not to be committed and should always be ignored while synchronizing with Git. So that my changes in local system doesn't mess up with Git and Git changes of those files doesn't mess up my local files.

How do I achieve this? Anyway to mark those files to be ignored in such a way?

Answer 1

If the .project and .classpath are already committed, then they need to be removed from the index (but not the disk)

git rm --cached .project
git rm --cached .classpath

Then the .gitignore would work (and that file can be added and shared through clones).
For instance, this gitignore.io/api/eclipse file will then work, which does include:

# Eclipse Core      
.project

# JDT-specific (Eclipse Java Development Tools)     
.classpath

Note that you could use a "Template Directory" when cloning (make sure your users have an environment variable $GIT_TEMPLATE_DIR set to a shared folder accessible by all).
That template folder can contain an info/exclude file, with ignore rules that you want enforced for all repos, including the new ones (git init) that any user would use.

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As commented by Abdollah

When you change the index, you need to commit the change and push it.
Then the file is removed from the repository. So the newbies cannot checkout the files .classpath and .project from the repo.