git: How to ignore all present untracked files?

Question

Is there a handy way to ignore all untracked files and folders in a git repository?
(I know about the .gitignore.)

So git status would provide a clean result again.

Answer 1

In case you are not on Unix like OS, this would work on Windows using PowerShell

git status --porcelain | ?{ $_ -match "^\?\? " }| %{$_ -replace "^\?\? ",""} | Add-Content .\.gitignore

However, .gitignore file has to have a new empty line, otherwise it will append text to the last line no matter if it has content.

This might be a better alternative:

$gi=gc .\.gitignore;$res=git status --porcelain|?{ $_ -match "^\?\? " }|%{ $_ -replace "^\?\? ", "" }; $res=$gi+$res; $res | Out-File .\.gitignore

Answer 2

Found it in the manual

git status -uno

Answer 3

Two ways:

use the argument "-uno" to git-status. Here's an example:

[jenny@jenny_vmware:ft]$ git status
# On branch ft
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#       foo
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
[jenny@jenny_vmware:ft]$ git status -uno
# On branch ft
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

Or you can add the files and directires to .gitignore, in which case they will never show up.

Answer 4

If you have a lot of untracked files, and don't want to "gitignore" all of them, note that, since git 1.8.3 (April, 22d 2013), git status will mention the --untracked-files=no even if you didn't add that option in the first place!

"git status" suggests users to look into using --untracked=no option when it takes too long.

Answer 5

As already been said, to exclude from status just use:

git status -uno  # must be "-uno" , not "-u no"

If you instead want to permanently ignore currently untracked files you can, from the root of your project, launch:

git status --porcelain | grep '^??' | cut -c4- >> .gitignore

Every subsequent call to git status will explicitly ignore those files.

UPDATE: the above command has a minor drawback: if you don't have a .gitignore file yet your gitignore will ignore itself! This happens because the file .gitignore gets created before the git status --porcelain is executed. So if you don't have a .gitignore file yet I recommend using:

echo "$(git status --porcelain | grep '^??' | cut -c4-)" > .gitignore

This creates a subshell which completes before the .gitignore file is created.

COMMAND EXPLANATION as I'm getting a lot of votes (thank you!) I think I'd better explain the command a bit:

• git status --porcelain is used instead of git status --short because manual states "Give the output in an easy-to-parse format for scripts. This is similar to the short output, but will remain stable across git versions and regardless of user configuration." So we have both the parseability and stability;
• grep '^??' filters only the lines starting with ??, which, according to the git status manual, correspond to the untracked files;
• cut -c4- removes the first 3 characters of every line, which gives us just the relative path to the untracked file;
• the | symbols are pipes, which pass the output of the previous command to the input of the following command;
• the >> and > symbols are redirect operators, which append the output of the previous command to a file or overwrites/creates a new file, respectively.

ANOTHER VARIANT for those who prefer using sed instead of grep and cut, here's another way:

git status --porcelain | sed -n -e 's/^?? //p' >> .gitignore

Answer 6

If you want to permanently ignore these files, a simple way to add them to .gitignore is:

1. Change to the root of the git tree.
2. git ls-files --others --exclude-standard >> .gitignore

This will enumerate all files inside untracked directories, which may or may not be what you want.