Why is a .git folder automatically being created when creating a react app?

Question

I don't understand why a .git folder is automatically created when I do create-react-app in the terminal.

The .gitignore folder isn't there but a .git folder is.
Does anyone know why? Here's a picture of the folder

Answer 1

create-react-app is an application which creates a react skeleton for you.
The CLI command also set the folder as git folder

The git init is part of this script https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/blob/47e9e2c7a07bfe60b52011cf71de5ca33bdeb6e3/packages/react-scripts/scripts/init.js

The relevant part of the code is this:

function tryGitInit(appPath) {
       …
  execSync('git init', { stdio: 'ignore' });
  execSync('git add -A', { stdio: 'ignore' });
  execSync('git commit -m "Initial commit from Create React App"',
           {stdio: 'ignore' });
  return true;
}

And as you can see the CLI command create git repository, add and commit the generated files as the initial commit.

This is why you have the .git folder.

Answer 2

My guess is that because create-react-app is based on facebooks GitHub repository, and in their workflow, they use git to manage/commit your work they have included it as a default when you create a new project.

You can always add a .gitignore in manually at the same level as the .git folder (it does not need to be inside the .git folder). I prefer using vim to do it so...

vim .gitignore

Then you can press i to start editing the file and write any of the folders you want to ignore (i.e. node_modules, build).

And then press escape and :wq! to save the file.

If you want to commit your changes to a remote repository such as git hub you will be using the following commands, and changing the URL to point to your repo.

# stage all your changes
git add .

# commits them to your local repository with a message
git commit -m "This change has been made"

# add remote url
git remote add origin https://github.com/example-user/example-repo.git


# pushes the changes you have committed to master branch
git push -u

There is some more git commands to consider when working with branches other than master, but this should be enough to get you started.

Hope this answers your question,

Matt