Why does .meteor have a .gitignore file?

Question

I am creating a new meteor app and would like to put the whole thing under git source control. When cloning a working copy of my meteor directory, meteor gives : run: You're not in a Meteor project directory.

After inspecting the .meteor directory, I see that the files in here are being excluded in my local clone.

Is there a particular reason this is done?

Answer 1

as @Swadq already pointed about, the .meteor directory is Meteor's directory. It contains a folder and a file.

The local directory contains the compiled version of your application and some database information (lock-file and the actual raw data of mongodb). This of course should not be included in your VCS.

The package file contains all packages meteor should load for your application. This is of course important and must be included in your VCS. More importantly: this file is checked for to determine if the current directory is a meteor application. If you don't include this you'll loose the packages you relay on and the ability to simply run the app. using meteor.

So ideally your .gitignore file only should contain .meteor\local but not .meteor\packages. When using meteorite the .gitignore file should contain .meteor\meteorite as well.