Why doesn't git ignore .gitgnore?

Question

Why doesn't git ignore .gitignore? Is this a bug or is this a feature? I can't see any reason why one would like to share ones .gitignore file. It feels a bit ironic to have to add .gitignore to .gitignore.

Is there any reason for this?

Answer 1

In short - it's a feature.

.gitignore is not meant as a local file for every developer on a project.

You need to ignore files and folders which are not meant to be committed to the repo by anyone.

Examples: build folders, vendor folders (installed via a package manager - e.g. node_modules), binary files.

Here is a nice help article from GitHub: https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files

You could also check out the github/gitignore repository for examples.

E.g. Symfony2 .gitignore is ignoring logs, cache, uploads, vendor libraries installed via composer and commonly used binaries like composer.phar:

# Bootstrap
app/bootstrap*

# Symfony directories
vendor/*
*/logs/*
*/cache/*
web/uploads/*
web/bundles/*

# Configuration files
app/config/parameters.ini
app/config/parameters.yml

# Composer
composer.phar

Answer 2

This is a feature. For example in Java you want to ignore all *.class files. So every user of your repository have to ensure, that no *.class files are committed. Therefore this is a usecase where this .gitignore should be available to all users of this repository.