The Gitignore file
If you don’t want to commit a file into a Git repository, it makes sense not to have the file show up in the staging area.
You can do this with a Gitignore file.
In the video, we installed a library called Typi with npm. Many files come into our staging area when we installed Typi.
![Node modules files in staging area](/_astro/node-modules-folder.3af7f33c_Z2pGtbb.png)
To prevent node_modules
and its files from appearing in the staging area, you:
- Create a
.gitignore
file at the root of the project - Add
node_modules
in the Gitignore file
And the staging area becomes clean. AT this point, you want to commit your .gitignore
file to preserve what to ignore.
![Node modules removed from staging area](/_astro/clean-staging-area.a5cae0c9_Xd7xl.png)
How to use Gitignore
Each line in the Gitignore file can be used to match files and folders you don’t want to see in the staging area.
- To ignore a file, you write the file name.
- To ignore a folder, you write the folder name
- To ignore an extension, you can use a
*
wildcard, like*.log