I'm the first to admit that my git knowledge isn't the greatest. Sure, I can get by - do what I need to do - but I'm by no means an expert. I'm hoping that by doing a few of these posts on my favourite git features it will inspire me to learn more!
Situation
I had picked up a project from someone else, and wasn't too familiar with the code base. I needed to add a file to the repository - an executable file that was needed as a dependency to run the code locally.
I added it to the repository but it didn't show up in the pending changes section of my editor.
Instantly I recognised that this file was being ignored with the .gitignore file - it was just a case of finding the rule! This particular repository was home to a number of different sub-projects in different languages. Each of these directories had a different .gitignore, and there was one at the top level. I started scratching round in these files, trying to find the rule causing the exclusion. I thought that there must be a better way to find it. On a whim, I did a quick google search and sure enough I found a solution!
Solution
The check-ignore feature of git can help us here. Simply, I ran the following in my repository:
git check-ignore -v bin/my-ignored-file
And this tells my exactly which rule in which gitignore file is causing me the problem:
my-project/.gitignore:99:bin/ "bin/my-ignored-file"
Explanation
Let's unpack what all this means:
my-project/.gitignoreis the location of the.gitignorecontaining the offending rule.:99:bin/this means that on line 99 of the .ignore file, there is abin/rule, and it's this one that's causing the problem.bin/my-ignored-filethe missing file.
Then you can make any adjustments you like. For me, I wanted to keep the bin/ rule, but include one the one dependency. So I added the following rule to my .gitignore:
!bin/my-ignored-file
And then I could commit my file
Happy committing!
