Gitignore all folders beginning with a period

Question

I want to use a .gitignore file to ignore all folders beginning with a period (hidden folders of linux).

I can't figure out the syntax, though I'm sure it's simple.

How's it done?

Answer 1

Use one of these patterns:

# ignore all . files but include . folders .* !.*/ 

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# ignore all . files and . folders .*  # Dont ignore .gitignore (this file) # This is just for verbosity, you can leave it out if # .gitignore is already tracked or if you use -f to # force-add it if you just created it !/.gitignore 

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# ignore all . folders but include . files .*/ 

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What is this pattern?

.* - This patter tells git to ignore all the files which starts with .

! - This tells git not to ignore the pattern. In your case /.gitignore

A demo can be found in this answer:
Git: how to ignore hidden files / dot files / files with empty file names via .gitignore?

Answer 2

.*/ will match everything that starts with a dot and is a folder

With the following command you can test it: mkdir test && cd test && git init && mkdir -p .foo .foo/.bar foo/.bar && touch .foo/dummy .foo/.bar/dummy foo/.bar/dummy && git add . && git status && echo '.*/'>.gitignore && git reset && git add . && git status