Re: Ignoring local changes

[Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>]

Pazu wrote:
> Is there any way to make git completely ignore changes to certain local files? I
> know about .gitignore, but that doesn't work when the files I want to ignore
> were already added to the repository.
> 

Yes it does. Just add the file to .gitignore and it won't be noticed
anymore.

Correction: I just tested this, and while git-add won't touch the file, 
git-update-index will, and git-status still shows it as modified.

This feels like a bug to me.

> A little more context should help you understand my need. I'm currently tracking
> a big subversion repository using git-svn; I do all my develop on local git
> branches, and later use git-svn dcommit to push these changes to the svn
> repository. 
> 
> There are some files in the svn repository (and by extension, on my local
> mirrored repository) that are almost always locally modified (eclipse/IDEA
> project files or generated artifacts that someone else added to svn), but I
> almost never want to commit then. This is a hassle in several situations:
> 
> 1) git-status always show these files as modified, polluting the output and
> making it harder for me to pinpoint the "real" changes.
> 2) git-rebase refuses to run, since the working copy will always be dirty*
> 3) since git-svn dcommit uses git-rebase, sometimes it fails for the same reason.
> 
> So, is there any way to make git look the other way regarding these files?
> 

man git-ls-files, search for .git/info/exclude and see if that works for 
you.

On a side-note, it would be neat if it was possible to set 
--exclude-per-directory as a config option. It would save an awful lot 
of hassle for imported repositories. Even more so if 
git-{cvs,svn,p4}import and the lot set it up automagically.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se