Remove untracked file from appearing in git status

Question

When I do

git status

this appears:

Changes not staged for commit:

  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)

  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)



    modified:   src/app.js

    modified:   src/view/view.js

    modified:   src/view/layout.js

    modified:   src/view/layout2.js

    modified:   src/view/layout3.js

    modified:   src/view/layout4.js

    modified:   src/view/layout5.js



Untracked files:

  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)



    ../hidemeplease.json

Usually I do

git add -A

to stage all changes at once but this would also add the untracked file. So now I need to painstakingly stage my changes one file at a time.

How do I stop the untracked file from appearing in

git status

? I do not want to delete the file, just ignore it, or have

git status

ignore it.

I tried doing things like:

git update-index --assume-unchanged hidemeplease.json

but to no avail.

Any ideas?

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Answer 1

An untracked file, in Git, is a file whose path name does not appear in the index.

Since it's not in the index, you cannot tell git update-index to mark the index entry as "assume unchanged" or "skip worktree". But this is actually good news.

If a file is not in the index, git status will normally complain about it, and git add . would add it. To prevent these from occurring, list the file's path name in a .gitignore file.

The .gitignore file contains a list of path names that Git will shut up about, and not auto-add. So it should really be called .git-shut-up-about-these-files-and-do-not-auto-add-them. That name is kind of unweildy, though, hence .gitignore.

Note that if a file's path name is in the index, listing that file in a .gitignore file has no effect at all. That's why the current complaint is good news.

Remove untracked file from appearing in git status

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