Git Kata: Basic Ignore

We'll work a bit with the .gitignore file in this kata. In this file you can specify both file extensions and folder structures that you do not want Git to track. You can still git add files and folder that are ignored in the .gitignore file.

We will also work with git rm, which is the Git remove command. git rm does just the same as removing a file from your working directory, and then staging that change by issuing a git add filename on the file that was just deleted. Sometimes you add a file by accident that was not meant for Git e.g. binary files, class files etc.

If you want to signal to Git that a file needs to be removed from git, but still want it in your working directory, then use git rm --cached to issue a remove command on the staging area, but not in your working directory.

Setup:

1. Run source setup.sh (or .\setup.ps1 in PowerShell)

The task

1. Create a file with the name foo.s
2. What is the output of git status?
3. Create a .gitignore file in your working directory containing *.s
4. What is the output of git status?
5. Commit the .gitignore file
6. Commit file1.txt
7. Add txt files to .gitignore by adding a line in the file containing *.txt
8. What does git status tell us?
9. Change file1.txt
10. What does git status tell us? Why was the file tracked even though the txt extension is in the ignore file?
11. Make another text file file2.txt in the repository, what does git status look like now? Why is it not tracked?
12. Stage the removal of file1.txt with the command git rm --cached
13. What does git status say?
14. Create a new file called file3.txt and add the line !file3.txt to .gitignore. (See note below)
15. What does git status say? Can you think of a use-case for keeping track of a file although the extension is ignored?

Note

If you are using zsh instead of bash(default on Mac and some Linux') then echo "!file3.txt" >> .gitignore will fail because of shell expansion. Either use an editor to modify the file or escape the ! e.g. echo "\!file3.txt" >> .gitignore

Useful commands

• git rm
• git add
• git commit
• git commit -m
• git rm --cached

Aliases

You can set up aliases as such: git config --global alias.lol 'log --oneline --graph --all' This might be useful to you.