oliverdavies.uk/source/_daily_emails/2024-01-27.md

---
title: gitignore - inclusive or exclusive?
date: 2024-01-27
permalink: daily/2024/01/27/gitignore-inclusive-or-exclusive
snippet: |
  How do you write your .gitignore files?
tags:
  - software-development
  - git
---

Add everything and ignore what you don't want, or ignore everything and explicitly add what you need.

There are two ways to structure a .gitignore file.

The default approach is that all files can be added, and you specify the files and directories you want to ignore.

For example, if my `.gitignore` file was this, these two directories would be ignored:

```language-plain
vendor
web
```

The other approach is to ignore everything and unignore the things to add. For example:

```language-plain
*
!build.yaml
!Dockerfile
!docker-compose.yaml
!web/*/custom
```

Both approaches work and are regularly used.

Which approach do you prefer and why?

Reply and let me know.