HGIGNORE(5) Mercurial Manual HGIGNORE(5)NAMEhgignore - 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 manu‐
ally. 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 hgrc(5) man page for details
of how to configure these files. Look for the "ignore" entry in the
"ui" section.
To control Mercurial's handling of files that it manages, see the hg(1)
man page. Look for the -I and -X options.
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.
The chosen syntax stays in effect when parsing all patterns that fol‐
low, 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 pat‐
tern, start it with ^.
EXAMPLE
Here is an example ignore file.
# use glob syntax.
syntax: glob
*.elc
*.pyc
*~
# switch to regexp syntax.
syntax: regexp
^\.pc/
AUTHOR
Vadim Gelfer <vadim.gelfer@gmail.com>
Mercurial was written by Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>.
SEE ALSOhg(1), hgrc(5)COPYING
This manual page is copyright 2006 Vadim Gelfer. Mercurial is copy‐
right 2005-2009 Matt Mackall. Free use of this software is granted
under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2.
AUTHOR
Vadim Gelfer <vadim.gelfer@gmail.com>
Organization: Mercurial
HGIGNORE(5)
