git-ignore 🙈

git-ignore lets you generate .gitignore files for your repositories right from the terminal

Installation · Usage · Why? · How? · Credits · License

Installation 🛠

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

brew untap janniks/git-ignore
brew uninstall git-ignore

Build from source (via Cargo)

Tested on: macOS, Archlinux

1. Install Rust and Cargo (e.g. via rustup).
2. Clone the repository via git and enter the project folder:

git clone https://github.com/janniks/git-ignore.git
cd git-ignore

3. Run Cargo's build command:

cargo build

The binary is generated into the target/debug directory. 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/bin directory).

If ~/.cargo/bin/ is already in your environment's PATH, your can run cargo install --path . to build and move the executable there (and skip step 4).

4. Move the executable:

mv target/debug/git-ignore /usr/local/bin/git-ignore

rf /usr/local/bin/git-ignore

rf ~/.cargo/bin/git-ignore

cargo uninstall git-ignore

Usage 🚀

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.

Why? ⚡️

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.

How? 💭

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.

Credits 🌎

• git-ignore uses templates from the Toptal gitignore.io project.

License ⚖️

MIT