What is .gitignore and how to use it

The .gitignore is a plain-text file. It allows you to specify files and folders that you’d like to exclude from your git commits. .gitignore should be placed in the root directory of your git project.

You can add files to .gitignore by adding their names to it.

local.env

Here, I’ve excluded the file local.env from being added to the next git commit.

To add more entries to .gitignore, use new lines.

local.env
reminder.txt

If you specify the directory (folder) name, all it’s files and subdirectories will be excluded.

local.env
reminder.txt

node_modules
public

To exclude a file that’s located in the internal directory, you should specify its path relative to the location of .gitignore.

local.env
reminder.txt

node_modules
public

src/routes/localHelper.js

One of the most common folders to ignore in modern JavaScript projects in the node_modules directory.