Ignore files that have already been committed to a Git repository [duplicate]

Solution 1:

To untrack a single file that has already been added/initialized to your repository, i.e., stop tracking the file but not delete it from your system use: git rm --cached filename

To untrack every file that is now in your .gitignore:

First commit any outstanding code changes, and then, run this command:

git rm -r --cached .

This removes any changed files from the index(staging area), then just run:

git add .

Commit it:

git commit -m ".gitignore is now working"

To undo git rm --cached filename, use git add filename.

Make sure to commit all your important changes before running git add . Otherwise, you will lose any changes to other files.

Please be careful, when you push this to a repository and pull from somewhere else into a state where those files are still tracked, the files will be DELETED

Solution 2:

If you are trying to ignore changes to a file that's already tracked in the repository (e.g. a dev.properties file that you would need to change for your local environment but you would never want to check in these changes) than what you want to do is:

git update-index --assume-unchanged <file>

If you wanna start tracking changes again

git update-index --no-assume-unchanged <file>

See git-update-index(1) Manual Page.

Also have a look at the skip-worktree and no-skip-worktree options for update-index if you need this to persist past a git-reset (via)

Update: Since people have been asking, here's a convenient (and updated since commented on below) alias for seeing which files are currently "ignored" (--assume-unchanged) in your local workspace

$ git config --global alias.ignored = !git ls-files -v | grep "^[[:lower:]]"

Solution 3:

To untrack a file that has already been added/initialized to your repository, ie stop tracking the file but not delete it from your system use: git rm --cached filename