Git is ignoring files that aren't in gitignore

Question

I have a git repository that is ignoring image files as well as a few other files, but my .gitignore file only has it ignoring a config.php file. Is there some global ignore file somewhere that I can't seem to find? I have to specify files to add them now, and it's giving me this warning:

The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files.

The contents of my ~/.gitconfig file are only my e-mail address.

Related: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12144633/explain-which-gitignore-rule-is-ignoring-my-file — krlmlr, Jun 12 '18 at 09:06

score 225 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

225

`git check-ignore`

Use git check-ignore command to debug your gitignore file (exclude files).

For example:

$ git check-ignore -v config.php
.gitignore:2:src    config.php

The above output details about the matching pattern (if any) for each given pathname (including line).

So maybe your file extension is not ignored, but the whole directory.

The returned format is:

<source> <COLON> <linenum> <COLON> <pattern> <HT> <pathname>

Or use the following command to print your .gitignore in user HOME and repository folder:

cat ~/.gitignore "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"/.gitignore "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"/.git/info/exclude

Alternatively use git add -f which allows adding otherwise ignored files.

See: man gitignore, man git-check-ignore for more details.

Syntax

git check-ignore [options] pathname…

git check-ignore [options] --stdin

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

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answered Mar 07 '15 at 19:12

kenorb

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This is much better than the accepted answer. No offense to that one, but this saved my day. Thank you kenorb. – luanjunyi Aug 04 '15 at 21:46
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Deserves more upvotes. Found out that some weird gitignore in some /vendor/ folders caused issues with latest git version. – Manuel Arwed Schmidt Sep 05 '15 at 20:50
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this one saved me today... it seems that visual studio created a file called gitignore_global.txt in the users document folder and this was ignoring files I was not able to (un)ignore – Samuel Nov 18 '15 at 23:58
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Perfectly solved my problem. Some patterns are not easy to catch by eye!! – Willa Sep 15 '16 at 13:27

score 56 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 09 '13 at 17:23

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It might be good to know that your git configuration can contain a core.excludesfile which is a path to a file with additional patterns that are ignored. You can find out if you have such a configuration by running (in the problematic git repo):

git config core.excludesfile

If it prints a file path, look at the contents of that file for further information.

In my case I installed git via an old version of boxen which ignored the pattern 'Icon?' that in my case gave me the warning, mentioned in this question, for a folder icons (I'm on a case insensitive filesystem that's why Icon? matches icons).

answered Sep 09 '13 at 17:23

gabrielf

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This was indeed my problem. Not sure how or when this file is edited but it had the file I wanted listed in it – toxaq Feb 26 '14 at 06:06
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Thank you, you saved me hours of pure agony. In my case, it was the installation of source tree(a tool visualize git repo) which unlogically created under documents folder a gitignore_global.txt which included plenty of exclusions. – Mechanical Object Nov 27 '14 at 23:58
I had that same damn `Icon?` being ignored. – Justin Skiles Dec 10 '15 at 01:25
This was the case for me. Had quite a few rules inside the global ignore file. Thanks for the tip +1 – Madness Oct 04 '16 at 10:23
I had *.json in my global ignore - talk about a nightmare - thank you! – Jason Perfetto Jan 02 '20 at 15:10

score 31 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 28 '16 at 09:37

31

Check these out:

Have you looked for other .gitignore files, as there can be many of them.
Also, look at REPO/.git/config to see if there is anything there.
Repo exclude Local per-repo rules can be added to the .git/info/exclude file in your repo. These rules are not committed with the repo so they are not shared with others. This method can be used for locally-generated files that you don’t expect other users to generate, like files created by your editor.

edited Sep 28 '16 at 09:37

Peter

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answered Feb 24 '12 at 19:04

gahooa

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There are no other .gitignore files in the repository, nor is there anything in the .git/config file that ignores anything. How is .git/info/exclude configured? – Ian Hunter Feb 24 '12 at 19:13
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It's not clear why this answer is marked as answered. How exactly this issue was resolved? – Next Developer Aug 15 '16 at 15:51
exclude was my problem. I knew there was another way to ignore, which I'd used in the past, but forgotten where it was! – Chucky Jun 14 '17 at 09:05

score 22 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 10 '13 at 21:31

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I had the same problem - a directory was being ignored by git with this error:

➭ git add app/views/admin/tags/
The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files:
app/views/admin/tags
Use -f if you really want to add them.
fatal: no files added

I finally figured out my problem was a line in my ~/.gitignore_global:

TAGS

which was matching the path app/views/admin/tags. I fixed it by adding a leading slash to the global gitignore file

/TAGS

and git started tracking my directory again.

answered Mar 10 '13 at 21:31

Shevaun

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+1 for making me look for partial matches... gitignore_global.txt contained "[Rr]elease*/" which was causing my "releasenotes" directory to be ignored. – Trev May 02 '13 at 02:09
To make it even harder, git will ignore only newly-added files, not ones already in the repo. So when I added "foo/" to my .gitignore, it ignored only recently added files in foo subdirectories and not all files. Took me an hour to figure out why some files were being ignored and others weren't. – ccleve Jan 09 '15 at 18:10
I have the same problem. SourceTree sets ~/.gitignore_global file in Tools menu->Options item-> Git tab. After I cleaned up field Global Ignore list "git add..." command worked. – Kate Feb 29 '16 at 12:21
I had the same issue. I had `help` directory which was being ignored. Luckily I found your answer quite quickly. – Abdul Sadik Yalcin Sep 24 '18 at 10:31

score 10 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 20 '15 at 19:05

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For me I accidentally had a wildcard in my ~/.gitignore_global file. Maybe check there?

answered Nov 20 '15 at 19:05

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That was exactly the issue for me. I had *.png there, no idea how it got there. – Shahar Jan 26 '16 at 09:37
Thx this cost me two hours... – Gabriele F. Dec 14 '20 at 21:29

score 3 · Answer 6 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:33

Another thing to try: I had a directory B with its own .git repository nested under my project directory A (but not as a submodule). I made some changes to B, and wanted to make it into a bonafide submodule. I believe git A was automatically ignoring B because it contained its own repository (see Nested git repositories without submodules?). I renamed the B folder, and tried to clone it again as a submodule, and that was bringing me the misleading "ignored by .gitignore" error message. The solution was to delete .git out of B.

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 23 '15 at 00:46

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In my case it was the forward slash in my path causing the problem...

Not Work

/srv/bootstrap/

Work

srv/bootstrap/

answered Oct 23 '15 at 00:46

jwogrady

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score 2 · Answer 8 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:55

I was having the exact same problem as you. The only reply you got listed a few places to check, but none of them solved the problem for me, and from your comment I don't think for you either. I had no OTHER .gitignore files hiding lower in the directory tree; nothing in .git/config; nothing in .git/ingore/exclude

If you still have the problem, check this answer. It solved the issue for me

Basically, check for a ~/.gitignore file. Mine was called ~/.gitignore_global. I don't know when it was created (I certainly didn't make it), but I tried a ton of different git setup's when I first installed, so one of them must have put it there.

Hope his answer helps you as well!

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 23 '14 at 06:11

Another reason for receiving this error message from git is when executing the git submodule add command while a previous git command has crashed and left the lock file (this can happen, for instance, when you use custom scripts which include git commands and you haven't noted the crash).

If you execute the command git commit instead, while none of the conditions have changed (git submodule add will keep yelling that your .gitignore files are to blame), you'll see another error report instead:

$ git commit -a
fatal: Unable to create '..../.git/index.lock': File exists.

If no other git process is currently running, this probably means a
git process crashed in this repository earlier. Make sure no other git
process is running and remove the file manually to continue.

and indeed deleting the lockfile:

rm .git/index.lock

resolves the issue. (This happens to git version 2.1.0.9736. It may be fixed in future git releases.)

Thanks this turned out to be the issue I was having. Life saver! — JDawgg, Mar 16 '17 at 03:21

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 30 '15 at 19:58

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Check you have permission to the folder. I have just run into this and it was because the folder was owned by the www-data user not the user I was logged in to the terminal as.

answered Mar 30 '15 at 19:58

Conrad Jones

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score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Jul 26 '16 at 13:36

One more thing: if the directory you're in requires root access for writing or executing, make sure you're on the root user. I actually got a weird error where I was trying to add a submodule and git kept complaining that the path I was cloning into was being ignored by a git ignore file. Then I changed to root user, ran the submodule add again, and there was no problem.

Tom Hale · Answer 12 · 2020-08-23T12:54:33.280

It may not be `.gitignore`: `skip-worktree` and `assume-unchanged`

A file may be ignored for the following reasons:

.gitignore (the combination of all of them)
git update-index --skip-worktree
git update-index --assume-unchanged

Additionally, a file may be UNignored by if it is in .gitignore AND already staged in the index/cache.

To check for the enumerated cases above:

For the two cases of .gitignore excludes, compare the output of:
- git check-ignore --verbose --non-matching --no-index file1 file2 file3
- git check-ignore --verbose --non-matching file1 file2 file3
git ls-files file1 file2 file3 | grep -E '^S'
git ls-files file1 file2 file3 | grep -E '^[[:lower:]]'

That's too hard, just give me an alias!

The following aliases will cover all the cases listed above:

ignore = !"bash -c 'diff --unified=999999999 --color=always <(echo a; git check-ignore --verbose --non-matching --no-index . \"$@\") <(echo b; git check-ignore --verbose --non-matching . \"$@\")' - \"$@\" | tail -n+7; git hidden \"$@\" # Show ignore status of arguments. Files included by index are tagged with prepended '+'."
hidden = !"git ls-files -v -- \"$@\"| grep -E '^(S|[[:lower:]])' # S means update-index --skip-worktree, and lower first letter means --assume-unchanged."

The comment and final " are part of the line to be copied to your .gitconfig.

Usage:

git ignore file1 file2 file3

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Mar 06 '15 at 06:14

0

Please also check ~/.gitignore and ~/.gitignore_global which might be created by some Git clients (e.g. Atlassian SourceTree on Mac OS X).

answered Mar 06 '15 at 06:14

viviansteller

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score 0 · Answer 14 · answered May 04 '15 at 13:08

Make sure the .gitignore file is not ignoring itself. A common mistake is adding a * rule to the .gitignore file to ignore every file in the current folder. The solution to this is to add an exception to .gitignore:

*
!.gitignore

This way all files in the directory will be ignored, except .gitignore.

Git is ignoring files that aren't in gitignore

14 Answers14

`git check-ignore`

Syntax

It may not be `.gitignore`: `skip-worktree` and `assume-unchanged`

That's too hard, just give me an alias!

Linked

Git is ignoring files that aren't in gitignore

14 Answers14

git check-ignore

Syntax

It may not be .gitignore: skip-worktree and assume-unchanged

That's too hard, just give me an alias!

Linked

`git check-ignore`

It may not be `.gitignore`: `skip-worktree` and `assume-unchanged`