The .gitignore project The gitignore project was started out of constant frustration of having to manage .gitignore files across multiple projects and platforms. What might be a valid ignore pattern for one repository may exclude a critical file from another. The .gitignore project attempts to resolve this by breaking common gitignore rules down into separate categories for languages, editors, operating systems and the like. Once broken down each individual set of rules can be refined and then mixed and matched as people need them. Working on an ASP.NET MVC Application? Grab just the rules for Windows, Visual Studio, and possible ReSharper! In order to make this process even easier, we have launched a website to complement this repository over at http://gitignore.org/ that automatically pulls from the master branch of our repository and allows you to simply check boxes to download a .gitignore file generated on the fly. Project Structure The structure for the project is very simple: It contains this README, folders which contain our partial .gitignore files, and a meta.xml which provides data about them. Partial .gitignore files are broken up and grouped according to the following categories: Editors/IDEs, Programming Frameworks, Programming Languages, Operating Systems, Third-Party Software and other Source Control systems. These files are all tied together by the meta.xml which is used by gitignore.org to handle it's job. As of now this file simply provides friendly names for the groups and files, but in the future it will be used to power such functionality as dependencies and suggestions. For example, if you select "XCode" as your editor it could automatically import rules for OS X. Contributing We strongly encourage git users to contribute additions and updates to our rules as we hope this repository grows to become a definitive source for reliable .gitignore rules. Contributing is fairly easy: If you have rules for something that we don't have: 1) Separate your rules into their proper categories. 2) Create an appropriately named file in the category folder with your rules. 3) Add an entry to the meta.xml for your new partial gitignore. #3 is very important, if the meta.xml is not updated gitignore.org will not recognize your addition. In the case that you we don't have a category that you feel your new partial .gitignore fits into, please feel free to create one or open an issue to discuss it. If you are adding/editing rules for something we already have I strongly encourage you to coordinate with other users who have edited that file as there may be specific reasons for why rules are the way they are, we want to try hard to avoid rules which may not play nice with each other.