How to use global gitignore with Visual Studio Code?

Question

I have a global gitignore file defined in my gitconfig but Visual Studio Code seems to not be interpreting it. How would I use a global gitignore with Visual Studio Code?

Answer 1

EDIT: Comment from Piyush Soni.

As of 9 august 2021, for this configuration to work, you also have to check useIgnoreFiles, hence:

"search.useGlobalIgnoreFiles": true,
"search.useIgnoreFiles": true

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You have to add these in your settings to allow global gitignore:

"search.useGlobalIgnoreFiles": true

_{Found on Microsoft/vscode#59364.}

For this to work, I also had to restart my VSCode session.

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Note that you must already have a global ignore file if you want it to be useful. You can set or see which one is set with the next commands:

# get
git config --global core.excludesFile
# set
git config --global core.excludesFile <filename>

See more details about gitignore on the git documentation.

Answer 2

This steps to Windows:

1. Open GitBash Terminal
2. Run touch ~/.gitignore_global to create a global .gitignore file in the home directory
3. Edit file in your home directory: ~/.gitignore_global
4. Add .vscode/ and any other files or directories that you want to ignore and not include in project-specific .gitignore files;
5. Save file;
6. In GitBash run git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore_global

Done! That’s it! Using .gitignore_global will let you customize your editor without having to edit and commit changes to the .gitignore file for every single project.