Alex Rivera | Logout

How can I make git ignore future revisions to a file?

Asked 2010-12-03T18:23:49.010
253

I have created a default version of a file included in a git repository. It's important that when someone clones the repository, they get a copy of this file. However, I would like to set git so that it ignores changes to this file later. .gitignore works only on untracked files.

My motivation is that this file contains machine-specific information. I would like to provide default values, while allowing people to make local changes that won't get pushed back to the origin repository, creating merge conflicts when we pull new changes.

We are generally pretty lazy and use git add . a lot, so I'm pretty sure if I can't tell git to ignore this file, changes to it will end up getting committed and pushed.

To summarize,

  1. I would like to create a file, call it default_values.txt that is added to my git repository and is included when someone clones that repository.
  2. git add . should not add default_values.txt to the commit.
  3. This behavior should be passed on to any clones of the repository.
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2 Answers

57

What you are searching for is git update-index --assume-unchanged default_values.txt.

See the docs for more details: http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-update-index.html

answered 2010-12-03T19:08:16.447
28

The approach I've generally seen is to create a file with a different name, eg: default_values_template.txt and put default_values.txt in your .gitignore. Instruct people to copy default_values_template.txt to default_values.txt in their local workspaces and make changes as needed.

answered 2010-12-03T18:28:29.870

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