It has been a YEAR to add one more Git related article! I believe that means the previous tips are so good that doesn’t need much update.

Sometimes we need to put some default configuration to a project, but everybody may have their own version due to their own environment, so that Git regards this as a change. However, such differences should not be pushed because one should not treat their own configuration as the standard of the others. We need a way to tell our local Git that the change should be left locally.

If you search from the web, you would probably know the assume-unchanged flag, but the command only accept a file. Sometimes we need to target the whole folder.

1. Tell Git not to track a folder

The solution is based on Stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16346535/recursive-git-update-index-assume-unchanged

git ls-files -z myFolderToIgnore/ | xargs -0 git update-index --assume-unchanged

(22 Feb 2021 Update)

Note:

• To undo assume-unchanged, change it to no-assume-unchanged instead.
• assume-unchanged may not be the best solution. You may consider using skip-worktree instead.
  • See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13630849/git-difference-between-assume-unchanged-and-skip-worktree
• For those files which you do not want it to be overwritten by actions like checkout, consider Private Branch Pattern