Gitignore Modifier

CLI tool to easily add and remove Git .gitignore templates obtained from https://github.com/github/gitignore. Instead of manually writing or copying what files to ignore for your project, you can use them instead!

For instance, for projects written in Python, you can safely ignore the directory __pycache__/ and many other files, included in Python.gitignore. Calling the following will write the contents of that file in ./.gitignore:

gitignore add python

Installation

This was tested using Python 3.7 (but probably compatible with previous versions). It also uses https://github.com/simonwhitaker/gibo as a back end. Make sure to have the required Python version and the gibo executable on the PATH (like in ~/bin/).

You can then also put this project's executable on the PATH, and source the Bash completion file (doing something like putting . gitignore-modifier/bash-completion/gitignore in ~/.bashrc).

Usage

• add [<name>...]: create .gitignore if needed, and add templates
• clear: remove all templates
• help: display the usage text
• list [-a]: list templates in .gitignore; -a to include other lines
• remove <name>...: remove templates
• update [<name>...]: update all or specified templates to latest version

Implementation

Within the .gitignore, each template is preceded by the line ##gitignore-start:<name> and followed by the line ##gitignore-end:<name>. This allows the script to parse .gitignore file and know which templates are already within.

To get the content of templates, the script calls gibo and parses its output appropriately.

The lines of .gitignore are kept in place as much as possible to avoid unncessary diff lines when changing it.

Gitignore links

Adding the name of a gitignore template within another template will make the parser automatically fetch that template. For example, the template for Fortran consists of a single line "C++.gitignore". This tells the parser to fetch the C++ gitignore. There can be multiple links, and they can be put on anywhere within the file, but they must be the only thing in a line.

Caveats

The templates might include files you don't want to ignore. If so, you'll have to manually edit the .gitignore file or force Git to not ignore them.