How to fix "gitignore not working" issue

How to fix gitignore not working issue.md

FYI: Created blog post with more details

How to fix ".gitignore not working" issue?

Sometimes git does not exclude files/folders added .gitignore especially if you had commited them before. Here is how to fix it. I am ignoring node_modules from Angular project as an example

1. Update .gitignore with the folder/file name you want to ignore. You can use anyone of the formats mentioned below (prefer format1)

### Format1  ###
node_modules/
node/

### Format2  ###
**/frontend/node_modules/**
**/frontend/node/**

2. Commit all the changes to git. Exclude the folder/files you don't want commit, in my case node_modules
3. Execute the following command to clear the cache

git rm -r --cached .

4. Execute git status command and it should output node_modules and sub directories marked for deletion
5. Now execute

git add .
git commit -m "fixed untracked files" 

6. That's it. Comment if you any questions.

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Update: Windows users make sure your .gitignore uses UTF-8 rather than UTF-16. See comment for details

It works! Thanks!

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Before doing possibly unnecessary commits to your project, check encoding of your .gitignore file

.gitignore should be in UTF-8

If it's not (happens for example in Powershell 5; install v.7 to fix it) then change it to UTF-8 and it should work properly.

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@SharakPL My .gitignore is an ASCII file, and clearing the cache solved my problem.

UTF-8 covers ascii, so switch to utf-8

OMD U HERO

Perfect solution...

This just isn't working no matter what I try. Every single solution online and still, git push -u origin main gives me the filesize error because the files in node_modules are too large.

@NoelleTGS don't commit node_modules to GitHub. Ignore them.

That's what the problem is, sorry I worded it weirdly. I'm trying to exclude that folder but it still pushes and I get the filesize error.

@NoelleTGS Show content of your .gitignore file and make sure it's in UTF-8.

Thank you! Worked perfect!

This might work for the ones that committed previously new file and at some point later they dont want it in the Github https://www.deployhq.com/git/faqs/removing-large-files-from-git-history

Also got this error lately. Turned out .gitignore file was saved with UTF-16 encoding (happened when I used npm package gitignore to generate a file). Just save it again with UTF-8 and it should work properly 😉

Thank you. :)

Thanks you. This saved a ton of time. I only wasted an hour before finding this.

Amazing solution to such an annoying issue. Specially with the git lens plugin of the VS code this had been bugging for months. Thanks a million !

Thanks. It works for me very well

Thanks. It really helped

Thanks, saved my day

Thank you!

For anyone adding any new file path or pattern to .gitignore, be sure to add a newline after the new entry at the bottom of the file if your editor doesn't automatically add it. This had me kicking myself for a while.

src\myFile.js
  <-- You need an empty line here

This is a best practice anyway and required by some languages.

Thank you for this, it helped a lot!

This solved my issue. Thanks! 👍

Thanks!!! You are the man.

Superhero 🦸

Perfect!!!

thank you!!

this is very helpful!

Thank you so much

Thanks for the help!

Thanks a lot for sharing it :)