Comments in .gitignore?

Question

Can you write comments in a .gitignore file?

If so, should the line be preceded with a # or some other indicator?

If you use an editor that knows about these things (e.g. Vim), the lines commented with `#` will be formatted appropriately - easy to discover yourself that way! — Cascabel, Jan 15 '12 at 00:03

score 899 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 29 '16 at 01:50

899

Yes, you may put comments in there. They however must start at the beginning of a line.

cf. http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Basics-Recording-Changes-to-the-Repository#Ignoring-Files

The rules for the patterns you can put in the .gitignore file are as follows:
- Blank lines or lines starting with # are ignored.
[…]

The comment character is #, example:

# no .a files
*.a

edited Jan 29 '16 at 01:50

Nicolas Raoul

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answered Jan 14 '12 at 22:26

TimWolla

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Don't know if it was true when this was answered, but the linked book section indicates that in addition to starting a line, comments can also be _appended_ to a line in the .gitignore file. – Stuart R. Jefferys Aug 29 '12 at 22:03
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@StuartR.Jefferys I'm on git 1.7.4.1 and am finding that a line with a comment at the end does not work: `src/main/log/ # Doesn't work. git status still shows this directory` `src/main/log/` Works fine. git status does not show the directory. In fact, it appears that _any_ whitespace at the end of the line is considered part of the ignore pattern. – Johann Aug 30 '12 at 19:23
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@Johann You are right! Trailing whitespace _is_ significant, even with directories (ending in `/`). If a file has a trailing space, the `.gitignore` entry must match; 0 or 2 spaces and it fails. I consider it a bug. I'm using git version 1.7.5.4. It _could_ be intentional, even if it probably _shouldn't_. But you can use `[ ]` as a space character specifier. That is much better than allowing trailing white-space; it allows for the rare intentional trailing space, while making the more common (and hard to see) error case detectable. – Stuart R. Jefferys Sep 09 '12 at 20:57
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Thanks for this; I was having the hardest time trying to understand why `git` was ignoring my `.gitignore`. It was because I put **end-of-line comments** after some entries. The default VIM syntax coloring for `config` filetypes misled me. – Luke Davis Dec 15 '17 at 01:38
Will there be multiline comments introduced? – Timo Sep 22 '20 at 06:26

score 267 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 23 '22 at 14:53

267

Do git help gitignore.

You will get the help page with following line:

A line starting with # serves as a comment.

edited Sep 23 '22 at 14:53

nishanthshanmugham

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answered Jan 14 '12 at 22:32

manojlds

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+1 for pointing out how to find information, not just giving information. – Иван Бишевац Jul 22 '14 at 08:47
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@cregox - `Also, I like using computers without command lines` - git is wrong place for you then, sorry. – manojlds Feb 24 '16 at 09:37
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@manojlds `git` is right place for everyone, just like `rsync`. they just need good gui's, like dropbox. too sad we're still missing one for git... – cregox Feb 24 '16 at 10:49
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You could also do `git help ignore` (which is supported by git bash-completion) – user202729 Oct 21 '19 at 16:43
This doesn't tell you how to find information. Finding information starts with `git help help`. – kon psych Mar 21 '20 at 05:57

Comments in .gitignore?

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