.gitignore Everything by Default • Hacker News Board

Re: .gitignore Everything by Default

#51

Post by kukkamario » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 3:55 PM UTC

hansvm wrote: post #27

flexagoon wrote: post #6

> other junk (CLAUDE.md for example) that shouldn’t be in your repository How is CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md "junk that shouldn't be in your repository"? If you're using agents for a project and have some project-specific rules for them, why would you want other people using agents in your repository to not have access to those rules and produce worse code?

IME people are usually shoving their personal preferences in CLAUDE.md, sometimes automatically as the agent updates the file with that developer's pet peeves. - Right now at $WORK, CLAUDE.md has a line saying to put one-off scripts in some gitignored place. That's fine if they're not worth checking in (IMO, you should build the tooling which would have made the script easy and check that in, but whatever), but that…

Well CLAUDE.local.md exists specially for personal preferences. Include line to CLAUDE.md that "never edit CLAUDE.md. Write user preferences to CLAUDE.local.md".

CLAUDE.local.md is the one that should be in .gitignore.

Re: .gitignore Everything by Default

#52

Post by Brajeshwar » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 3:55 PM UTC

It is weird that quite a few developers comes up with advices where they seem to come from a world where they work alone, have not work with enough people, or with enough projects.

In this case, a `.gitignore_global` takes care of the usual suspects that he mentioned `.DS_Store files, IDE config, compressed files, etc.`. Even if something goes wrong, it is usually caught during the initial scaffold before critical files goes in.

If one is working with new, young, rookie developers, give them the typical lesson on the global gitignore, local, config, and to have dotfiles, etc. Give yours for inspiration or something to start with.

Edit: I know that mine is not the best of the dotfiles on the internet but this has helped me switch multiple devices, multiple identities (work, projects, personal, etc) easily. I recently cleaned it up and added automation, test, etc with Claude Code. https://github.com/brajeshwar/dot

Re: .gitignore Everything by Default

#53

Post by chrismorgan » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

Not particularly well-considered opinion I’ve mulled over for a few years: Git on macOS should ignore .DS_Store and ._* by default. Would this cause any problems?

Re: .gitignore Everything by Default

#54

Post by aleqs » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

I use alint [0][1] to define and enforce rules about files/globs that should or shouldn't be committed, among other things. You can configure it run as a pre-commit hook or in CI.

(disclaimer - this is my own tool)

[0] https://github.com/asamarts/alint

[1] https://alint.org/docs/rules/git-hygiene/git_no_denied_paths...

Re: .gitignore Everything by Default

#55

Post by aleqs » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 4:06 PM UTC

rcfox wrote: post #10

This seems like bad advice. I've very rarely committed extra files by accident, but I would 100% forget to unignore files I meant to commit. If you're doing an initial setup step to gitignore everything, why not just do an initial setup step to gitignore the usual files? Make a template that you copy into all of your repos.

You can also use something like alint [0][1] to define and enforce rules about files/globs that should or shouldn't be committed, among other things. You can configure it to run as a pre-commit hook or in CI.

(disclaimer - this is my own tool)

[0] https://github.com/asamarts/alint [1] https://alint.org/docs/rules/git-hygiene/git_no_denied_paths...

Re: .gitignore Everything by Default

#56

Post by SmasherEpilepti » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 4:06 PM UTC

LaGrange wrote: post #41

rcfox wrote: post #10

This seems like bad advice. I've very rarely committed extra files by accident, but I would 100% forget to unignore files I meant to commit. If you're doing an initial setup step to gitignore everything, why not just do an initial setup step to gitignore the usual files? Make a template that you copy into all of your repos.

Recovery from forgetting to add something is _much_ easier than recovery from adding some weird configuration file with plaintext private keys in it.

It depends. I've lost hours of work after wiping and recreating a repo that had accidentally gitignored a file I was working on, and I didn't notice until too late.

Re: .gitignore Everything by Default

#57

Post by DarmokTanagra » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

Brajeshwar wrote: post #52

It is weird that quite a few developers comes up with advices where they seem to come from a world where they work alone, have not work with enough people, or with enough projects. In this case, a `.gitignore_global` takes care of the usual suspects that he mentioned `.DS_Store files, IDE config, compressed files, etc.`. Even if something goes wrong, it is usually caught during the initial scaffold before critical fi…

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Re: .gitignore Everything by Default

#58

Post by aleqs » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

ryanbrunner wrote: post #23

The problem with this approach (that their first example already demonstrates), is that you'll almost immediately start with a "this type of file is OK" solution, and whether something should go in git doesn't really have a super strong correlation with file type. It hobbles `git status` and essentially forces you to keep track of what you've changed yourself (since ignored files won't show up there), and it can inst…

I use alint [0][1] to define and enforce rules about files/globs that should or shouldn't be committed, among other things. You can configure it run as a pre-commit hook or in CI.

(disclaimer - this is my own tool)

[0] https://github.com/asamarts/alint

[1] https://alint.org/docs/rules/git-hygiene/git_no_denied_paths...

Re: .gitignore Everything by Default

#59

Post by yipinwong » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

Very security engineer minded approach.

I block every port for VPS, then open one by one. Same approach here with files.

The only downside I see here is, knowing which one to allow. For ports, it's easy, but files can have many different extensions.

Apps/CLIs, etc create files with extensions you never encountered before, which can cause issues.

Other than that, I like the apporach

Re: .gitignore Everything by Default

#60

Post by DarmokTanagra » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

flexagoon wrote: post #6

> other junk (CLAUDE.md for example) that shouldn’t be in your repository How is CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md "junk that shouldn't be in your repository"? If you're using agents for a project and have some project-specific rules for them, why would you want other people using agents in your repository to not have access to those rules and produce worse code?

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