Keeping Files Out of Git: ignore, exclude, and the Global File

What Not to Commit in a Laravel Project covers which files stay out of the repo. This is the mechanics post: Git gives you three different places to say “ignore this”, and they are not interchangeable.

.gitignore: the shared, committed one#

The .gitignore at the root of the repo is committed, so every clone gets it. This is where project-level rules live - Laravel’s default file already covers the essentials:

/vendor
/node_modules
.env
/storage/logs

If a file would be junk for anyone who clones the project, its rule belongs here.

.git/info/exclude: private to your clone#

This file works exactly like .gitignore but is not committed or pushed. Use it for things only your checkout produces - a scratch script you keep in the project root, a local docker-compose.override.yml nobody else has. Nobody else’s repo should carry rules for your personal files.

The global file: private to your machine#

Editor and OS noise follows you across every project, so Git lets you ignore it once, everywhere:

git config --global core.excludesFile ~/.gitignore_global

Put .idea/, .vscode/, .DS_Store and friends in there. If every project’s committed .gitignore carries editor rules, that is a sign this file is missing on someone’s machine.

When the file is already tracked#

An ignore rule does nothing for a file Git is already tracking - the classic case is a .env committed before the rule existed. Untrack it without deleting your local copy:

git rm --cached .env

Commit that removal and the ignore rule takes over from there. Note the file still exists in history; if what slipped in was a secret, untracking is not enough - see A Secret Got Committed. Now What?.

One last habit: run git status before committing and actually read the list. Ignoring rules prevent accidents, but the status list is where you catch the ones that got through.