why files inside .gitignore are getting added with "git add ." command & pushed to repo first commit?

Question

I've added few files in .gitignore but doing git add . first time and committing, pushing pushes even files which should have been ignored

#Sensitive Data
aws-exports.js
aws-exports-dev.js
aws-exports-main.js
.env

I saw these files getting committed to GH repo

Please add the relevant part of your `.gitignore` file to the question. — zr0gravity7, Jul 14 '21 at 16:23
Were these files already tracked at that point? Are you on a case-insensitive operating system and do those files differ in case from what's in `.gitignore`? — bk2204, Jul 18 '21 at 16:55

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 08 '21 at 16:01

How to find if files are already tracked ? I'm on Mac OS

As seen here:

git ls-files --error-unmatch <file name>
echo $?

If this prints 0, there was no error, meaning the file was tracked by Git. - If it prints 1, then the file was not tracked by Git.

Also:

git check-ignore -v -- aFile_that_should_be_ignored

If it prints nothing while you know if should be ignored, it means it is already tracked:

git rm --cached -- aFile_that_should_be_ignored
git check-ignore -v -- aFile_that_should_be_ignored

This time, your .gitignore rule should be displayed.

Note that you can create a GitHub repository from command-line (locally), with a .gitignore template (from github/gitignore), using gh repo create --gitignore=xxx (PR 3746).

Then you would clone your GitHub repository, and start working in it: any file that should be ignored would be, since none would have yet been tracked in that new local clone.

why files inside .gitignore are getting added with "git add ." command & pushed to repo first commit?

1 Answers1