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HGIGNORE(5)                    Mercurial Manual                    HGIGNORE(5)


NAME

       hgignore - syntax for Mercurial ignore files


SYNOPSIS

       The Mercurial system uses a file called .hgignore in the root directory
       of a repository to control its behavior when it searches for files that
       it is not currently tracking.


DESCRIPTION

       The working directory of a Mercurial repository will often contain
       files that should not be tracked by Mercurial. These include backup
       files created by editors and build products created by compilers.
       These files can be ignored by listing them in a .hgignore file in the
       root of the working directory. The .hgignore file must be created
       manually. It is typically put under version control, so that the
       settings will propagate to other repositories with push and pull.

       An untracked file is ignored if its path relative to the repository
       root directory, or any prefix path of that path, is matched against any
       pattern in .hgignore.

       For example, say we have an untracked file, file.c, at a/b/file.c
       inside our repository. Mercurial will ignore file.c if any pattern in
       .hgignore matches a/b/file.c, a/b or a.

       In addition, a Mercurial configuration file can reference a set of
       per-user or global ignore files. See the ignore configuration key on
       the [ui] section of hg help config for details of how to configure
       these files.

       To control Mercurial's handling of files that it manages, many commands
       support the -I and -X options; see hg help <command> and hg help
       patterns for details.

       Files that are already tracked are not affected by .hgignore, even if
       they appear in .hgignore. An untracked file X can be explicitly added
       with hg add X, even if X would be excluded by a pattern in .hgignore.


SYNTAX

       An ignore file is a plain text file consisting of a list of patterns,
       with one pattern per line. Empty lines are skipped. The # character is
       treated as a comment character, and the \ character is treated as an
       escape character.

       Mercurial supports several pattern syntaxes. The default syntax used is
       Python/Perl-style regular expressions.

       To change the syntax used, use a line of the following form:

       syntax: NAME

       where NAME is one of the following:

       regexp

              Regular expression, Python/Perl syntax.

       glob

              Shell-style glob.

       rootglob

              A variant of glob that is rooted (see below).

       The chosen syntax stays in effect when parsing all patterns that
       follow, until another syntax is selected.

       Neither glob nor regexp patterns are rooted. A glob-syntax pattern of
       the form *.c will match a file ending in .c in any directory, and a
       regexp pattern of the form \.c$ will do the same. To root a regexp
       pattern, start it with ^. To get the same effect with glob-syntax, you
       have to use rootglob.

       Subdirectories can have their own .hgignore settings by adding
       subinclude:path/to/subdir/.hgignore to the root .hgignore. See hg help
       patterns for details on subinclude: and include:.

       Note   Patterns specified in other than .hgignore are always rooted.
              Please see hg help patterns for details.


EXAMPLE

       Here is an example ignore file.

       # use glob syntax.
       syntax: glob

       *.elc
       *.pyc
       *~

       # switch to regexp syntax.
       syntax: regexp
       ^\.pc/


DEBUGGING

       Use the debugignore command to see if and why a file is ignored, or to
       see the combined ignore pattern. See hg help debugignore for details.


AUTHOR

       Vadim Gelfer <vadim.gelfer@gmail.com>

       Mercurial was written by Olivia Mackall <olivia@selenic.com>.


SEE ALSO

       hg(1), hgrc(5)


COPYING

       This manual page is copyright 2006 Vadim Gelfer.  Mercurial is
       copyright 2005-2023 Olivia Mackall.  Free use of this software is
       granted under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or
       any later version.


AUTHOR

       Vadim Gelfer <vadim.gelfer@gmail.com>

       Organization: Mercurial

                                                                   HGIGNORE(5)

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