til/git/check-how-a-file-is-being-ignored.md

Check How A File Is Being Ignored

There are a few places on your machine where you can specify the files that git should ignore. The most common is a repository's .gitignore file. The other places those excludes are specified can be more obscure. Fortunately, git check-ignore is a command that can show you specifically where.

For instance, let's check why my notes.md file is being ignored.

$ git check-ignore -v .DS_Store
.git/info/exclude:7:notes.md   notes.md

At some point I added it to my repo's .git/info/exclude file. The -v flag (verbose) when included with check-ignore tells me the file location.

How about these pesky .DS_Store directories? How are those being ignored?

$ git check-ignore -v .DS_Store
/Users/jbranchaud/.gitignore:3:.DS_Store        .DS_Store

Ah yes, I had added it to my global exclude file which I've configured in ~/.gitconfig to be the ~/.gitignore file.

See man git-check-ignore for more details.