Git ignore is not ignoring the netbeans private files

Question

When ever I do git status, the netbeans private.xml is making trouble, I tried adding that in git ignore several ways. but the gitignore simply does not ignore it.

git status
On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.

Changes not staged for commit:
   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

   modified:   .gitignore
   modified:   nbproject/private/private.xml
...

My git ignore file is

node_modules/
dist/
*.log
nbproject/private/*    
*.bak
*.orig
*~
*.log
*private.xml

Tried both nbproject/private/* and *private.xml in the same file.

Answer 1

Your file is already added to the git repo.
Once file is added (not untracked) adding it to .gitignore will not ignore it since its already in the repo so you have to remove it from the repository, commit the deletion of the file and then it will be ignored.

See VonC code above on how to do it.

The important thing to understand is that once the file is already commited, adding it to git ignore will not ignore it.