Git command to show which specific files are ignored by .gitignore

I am getting my feet wet with Git and have the following issue:

My project source tree:

/
|
+--src/
+----refs/
+----...
|
+--vendor/
+----...

I have code (currently MEF) in my vendor branch that I will compile there and then move the references into /src/refs which is where the project picks them up from.

My issue is that I have my .gitignore set to ignore *.dll and *.pdb. I can do a git add -f bar.dll to force the addition of the ignored file which is ok, the problem is I can not figure out to list what files exist that are ignored.

I want to list the ignored files to make sure that I don't forget to add them.

I have read the man page on git ls-files and can not make it work. It seems to me that git ls-files --exclude-standard -i should do what I want. What am I missing?

Solution 1:

Notes:

xiaobai's answer is simpler (git1.7.6+): git status --ignored
(as detailed in "Is there a way to tell git-status to ignore the effects of .gitignore files?")
MattDiPasquale's answer (to be upvoted) git clean -ndX works on older gits, displaying a preview of what ignored files could be removed (without removing anything)

Also interesting (mentioned in qwertymk's answer), you can also use the git check-ignore -v command, at least on Unix (doesn't work in a CMD Windows session)

git check-ignore *
git check-ignore -v *

The second one displays the actual rule of the .gitignore which makes a file to be ignored in your git repo.
On Unix, using "What expands to all files in current directory recursively?" and a bash4+:

git check-ignore **/*

(or a find -exec command)

Note: https://stackoverflow.com/users/351947/Rafi B. suggests in the comments to avoid the (risky) globstar:

git check-ignore -v $(find . -type f -print)

Make sure to exclude the files from the .git/ subfolder though.

CervEd suggests in the comments, to avoid .git/:

find . -not -path './.git/*' | git check-ignore --stdin

Original answer 42009)

git ls-files -i

should work, except its source code indicates:

if (show_ignored && !exc_given) {
                fprintf(stderr, "%s: --ignored needs some exclude pattern\n",
                        argv[0]);

exc_given ?

It turns out it need one more parameter after the -i to actually list anything:

Try:

git ls-files -i --exclude-from=[Path_To_Your_Global].gitignore

(but that would only list your cached (non-ignored) object, with a filter, so that is not quite what you want)

Example:

$ cat .git/ignore
# ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree.
*.[oa]
$ cat Documentation/.gitignore
# ignore generated html files,
*.html
# except foo.html which is maintained by hand
!foo.html
$ git ls-files --ignored \
    --exclude='Documentation/*.[0-9]' \
    --exclude-from=.git/ignore \
    --exclude-per-directory=.gitignore

Actually, in my 'gitignore' file (called 'exclude'), I find a command line that could help you:

F:\prog\git\test\.git\info>type exclude
# git ls-files --others --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude
# Lines that start with '#' are comments.
# For a project mostly in C, the following would be a good set of
# exclude patterns (uncomment them if you want to use them):
# *.[oa]
# *~

So....

git ls-files --ignored --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude
git ls-files -i --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude

git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard
git ls-files -o -i --exclude-standard

should do the trick.

(Thanks to honzajde pointing out in the comments that git ls-files -o -i --exclude-from... does not include cached files: only git ls-files -i --exclude-from... (without -o) does.)

As mentioned in the ls-files man page, --others is the important part, in order to show you non-cached, non-committed, normally-ignored files.

--exclude_standard is not just a shortcut, but a way to include all standard "ignored patterns" settings.

exclude-standard
Add the standard git exclusions: .git/info/exclude, .gitignore in each directory, and the user's global exclusion file.

Solution 2:

There is a much simpler way to do it (git 1.7.6+):

git status --ignored

See Is there a way to tell git-status to ignore the effects of .gitignore files?

Solution 3:

Another option that's pretty clean (No pun intended.):

git clean -ndX

Explanation:

$ git help clean

git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree
-n, --dry-run - Don't actually remove anything, just show what would be done.
-d - Remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files.
-X - Remove only files ignored by Git.

Note: This solution will not show ignored files that have already been removed.

Solution 4:

While generally correct your solution does not work in all circumstances. Assume a repo dir like this:

# ls **/*                                                                                                       
doc/index.html  README.txt  tmp/dir0/file0  tmp/file1  tmp/file2

doc:
index.html

tmp:
dir0  file1  file2

tmp/dir0:
file0

and a .gitignore like this:

# cat .gitignore
doc
tmp/*

This ignores the doc directory and all files below tmp. Git works as expected, but the given command for listing the ignored files does not. Lets have a look at what git has to say:

# git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard                                                            
tmp/file1
tmp/file2

Notice that doc is missing from the listing. You can get it with:

# git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard --directory                                                
doc/

Notice the additional --directory option.

From my knowledge there is no one command to list all ignored files at once. But I don't know why tmp/dir0 does not show up at all.

Solution 5:

Git now has this functionality built in

git check-ignore *

Of course you can change the glob to something like **/*.dll in your case

Git Reference