How does gitignore work?

Question

Hello I'm new to git and I can't fully understand the .gitignore.

So let's say I have a Master Folder currently in Production and inside it there's a reports folder that I don't really need to track.

Master Folder
 |
 +-- file 1
 |    
 +-- dir 2
 |  |  
 |  \-- file 2.1
 |    
 +-- dir 3
 |  |  
 |  +-- file 3.1
 |  \-- file 3.2
 |    
 +-- Reports
 |  |  
 |  +-- file 4.1
 |  \-- file 4.2

Now, I wanted to modify the folder so I clone the Master Folder in my repository. Does the reports folder gets cloned too?

While I'm editing, some person added or changed files inside the reports folder.

After I finish editing, I need to update the Master Folder to what I've updated. If I git push my changes, will it affect the Reports Folder in the Master Folder?

Answer 1

Before you commit the reports to master, make sure you create a new .gitignore file in the root of your project. Once this is done, include the paths of the folders or files to the gitignore file. Make sure you specify one path per line.

In your case, if you want to ignore all the files in your Reports folder, then add the following to the .gitignore file.

/Reports

If you want to exclude specific files, you can do something like

/Reports/*.docx

Assuming thst the reports are mixed file extensions but you want to ignore all word file reports from the folder.

About cloning, if someone tries to clone the project, he won't get any report files as they were not committed at first place. Also, making any changes in the Reports folder won't be tracked by git any more.