Should *.datasource be ignored in version control?

Question

Should this be ignored in version control? XXX/Properties/DataSources/XXXEntities.datasource

Answer 1

Yes it can. In git you can add *.datasource to a .gitignore file at the root level to ignore these type of files everywhere, or, you can put that entry in a .gitignore file in a specific directory and it will only be effective in that directory and any directories therein. You can also stop the recursive behaviour by adding an "unignore" line for this file type deeper within the directories.

Answer 2

Short answer: Yes, you can ignore them.

Long answer: It depends. Those XML files (as far as I know) are used by visual studio for data bounding UI elements in WPF, WinForms or WebForms. In most project you don’t want to access directly to data source from Presentation layer, but via business layer and it would have its own .datasource files. Therefor if you explicitly don’t know that you need them, you could ignore them.