How to ignore files with PhpStorm and Git?

Question

I am not able to ignore files which are already under version control.

The "Ignore..." entry is disabled:

1st question: Why is it disabled?

2nd: How to add files afterwards to git ignore?

Thanks a lot!

Edit

PhpStorm says: "This option is only available if a file under the Unversioned Files node is selected. Use this option to ignore the selected file if you want to leave it unversioned."

(Source: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/phpstorm/2016.3/local-changes-tab.html)

But sometimes you may have files for an initial commit, then add it to git ignore to allow local changes (for local development) while not committing / pushing this file to any repo anymore.

Edit 2

Another way I handle this nowadays is to add the changes with credentials to a Changelist which is not committed:

Answer 1

It make no sense to ignore files that are already in your version control. So you have to remove them first with:

git rm --cached filename

then that files exist locally but are removed from your repository. Then you can ignore that files.

Answer 2

For the first question, as you found in the link.

For the second question, if you want to ignore a file which has already version controlled by git, you should use git command to do that:

1. In the local repo, add the file name in .gitignore file. If you don’t have .gitignore, you can use touch .gitignore.
2. git rm --cached filename.