git-ignore lets you generate .gitignore files for your repositories right from the terminal
macOS (via Homebrew)
git-ignore is released and maintained via Homebrew, which needs to be installed first.
Run the following commands to install:
brew tap janniks/git-ignore
brew install git-ignore
Expand for uninstall instructions
brew untap janniks/git-ignore brew uninstall git-ignore
Tested on: macOS, Archlinux
- Install Rust and Cargo (e.g. via rustup).
- Clone the repository via git and enter the project folder:
git clone https://github.com/janniks/git-ignore.git
cd git-ignore
- Run Cargo's
buildcommand:
cargo build
The binary is generated into the
target/debugdirectory. If you want to run the command globally, you need to move it to a directory covered by your PATH environment variable (e.g. on Unix systems to the/usr/local/bindirectory).If
~/.cargo/bin/is already in your environment's PATH, your can runcargo install --path .to build and move the executable there (and skip step 4).
- Move the executable:
mv target/debug/git-ignore /usr/local/bin/git-ignore
Expand for uninstall instructions
Simply delete the executable from wherever it was moved:
rf /usr/local/bin/git-ignore
rf ~/.cargo/bin/git-ignore
cargo uninstall git-ignore
git-ignore is used to generate new .gitignore files or append content to existing ones.
From now on, you simply run git ignore to launch the interactive CLI, anytime you want to setup or change a .gitignore file.
Every time I start a new project/repository, I need a .gitignore file. And every time I missed something that had to be added later—often after unstashing/reverting, because of those pesky git add -all I love so dearly. Then came gitignore.io and made my life a lot easier. Sadly, not too long ago, Toptal decided to rebrand the site a bit (not too much, but we developers are purists). So, the next time I spun up a new repository, I started procrastinating. I no longer wanted to have to leave the terminal to setup a .gitignore file. And thus git-ignore was born. You can now utilize battle-tested ignore templates right from your terminal.
git-ignore is added as an external executable for git. Basically, if there are executables in your PATH that match git-<command> then they will become available through git as git <command>.
git-ignore uses GitHub and Toptal APIs to fetch the ignore templates.
- git-ignore uses templates from the Toptal gitignore.io project.