Why is .gitignore not ignoring my files?

See the image below. My .gitignore file should be ignoring all files in src/dist, but isn't.

.gitignore only ignores files that are not part of the repository yet. If you already git added some files, their changes will still be tracked. To remove those files from your repository (but not from your file system) use git rm --cached on them.

The .gitignore file ensures that files not tracked by Git remain untracked.

Just adding folders/files to a .gitignore file will not untrack them -- they will remain tracked by Git.

To untrack files, it is necessary to remove from the repository the tracked files listed in .gitignore file. Then re-add them and commit your changes.

The easiest, most thorough way to do this is to remove and cache all files in the repository, then add them all back. All folders/files listed in .gitignore file will not be tracked. From the top folder in the repository run the following commands:

git rm -r --cached .
git add .

Then commit your changes:

git commit -m "Untrack files in .gitignore"

Please note that any previous commits with the unwanted files will remain in the commit history. When pushing to GitHub be aware of a commit history that might contain .env or client_secret.json files.

Best practice is to create a .gitignore file and populate it with the folders/files you do not want tracked when starting a project. However, often it is necessary to add to the .gitignore file after realising that unwanted files are being tracked and stored.

Follow These steps to work gitignore

1. Make changes in .gitignore file.

2. Run git rm -r --cached . command.

3. Run git add . command

4. git commit -m "Commit message"

You can use this,

git rm -r --cached ./node_modules

if you want to ignore node_modules, for example

If your.gitignore file isn't ignoring your files and directories.

.gitignore just ignores files that have not yet been added to the repository. If you have already git added certain files, their modifications will be tracked. Use git rm -r --cached on such files to delete them from your repository (but not from your file system).

git rm -r --cached .        #untrack files
git add .                   #re-adding the files
git commit -m "issue fixed" #commiting changes
git push                    #pushing changes

gitignore ignores only untracked files. Your files are marked as modified - meaning they were committed in the past, and git now tracks them.

To ignore them, you first need to delete them, git rm them, commit and then ignore them.

first check the .gitignore encoding.
make sure the encoding id utf-8.
then untracked unwanted file by using git rm --cached filename now your problem fixed 

Look at this : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11451535/gitignore-is-not-working And particularly the remark from ADTC:

> Make sure your .gitignore file uses ANSI or UTF-8 encoding. If it uses > something else like Unicode BOM, it's possible that Git can't read the > file. – ADTC Dec 14 '17 at 12:39

If you are using VS Code:

Check the .gitignore file's Encoding Type. Change it to UTF-8 if it is not. Select the Reopen with Encoding option to change the file encoding.

This worked for me!

First delete the index.lock file from your git repo

rm -f .git/index.lock

and then add .gitignore

git add .gitignore

Its better to create .gitignore file in starting and mentioning the files we want to be ignored. If you want to ignore some files then execute git rm -r --cached

I was facing the same issue and then I realized that I had not created the .gitignore file properly.

In my case for some reason I created a .gitignore.txt file. Git will still track the files in the .gitignore file even after you remove the '.txt'. extension and save it.

Try deleting your old file and creating a new .gitignore file by 'touch .gitignore' in terminal, which solved it for me.

For some of the files in my project I needed to use git filter-branch which is better explained in this answare.