When working with Git, you use a .gitignore file to list files and directories that Git should ignore. However, the .gitignore file itself can sometimes appear as an untracked file. This can be confusing and counterproductive. Here’s how to ensure your .gitignore file is tracked by Git and doesn’t show up as untracked.

1. Manually Track the .gitignore File

The simplest way to stop .gitignore from appearing as an untracked file is to manually track it. By adding the .gitignore file to the Git index, you ensure that Git recognizes it as a tracked file.

• Open your terminal or Git bash.
• Navigate to your project directory.
• Use the command to add .gitignore to the index:

git add .gitignore

• To confirm that it has been added, use:

git status

• You should see .gitignore under “Changes to be committed”.

How To Stop .gitignore From Appearing In The List Of Untracked Files

2. Add .gitignore to Another .gitignore

In some scenarios, particularly for more complex projects, you might have multiple .gitignore files. If you want to ignore a specific .gitignore file, you can add it to another .gitignore file.

• Open the main .gitignore file in your project.
• Add the path to the .gitignore file you want to ignore. For example:

path/to/ignored/.gitignore

• Save and close the file

Example:

Imagine you have a project with the following structure:

my-project/
├── .gitignore
├── subdir/
│   ├── .gitignore
│   └── somefile.txt
└── mainfile.txt

You want to ignore the .gitignore file located inside the subdir directory from being tracked by Git. Here’s how you can do it:

• Open the main .gitignore file in your project.

You can do this with any text editor. For example, open my-project/.gitignore.

• Add the path to the .gitignore file you want to ignore.

Since you want to ignore subdir/.gitignore, you add the following line to my-project/.gitignore:

subdir/.gitignore

• Save and close the file.