pavankjadda/How to fix gitignore not working issue.md

## How to fix gitignore not working issue.md

      
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              How to fix gitignore not working issue.md
            
          
    FYI: Created blog post with more details

How to fix ".gitignore not working" issue?

Sometimes git does not exclude files/folders added .gitignore especially if you had commited them before. Here is how to fix it. I am ignoring node_modules from Angular project as an example

Update .gitignore with the folder/file name you want to ignore. You can use anyone of the formats mentioned below (prefer format1)

### Format1  ###
node_modules/
node/

### Format2  ###
**/frontend/node_modules/**
**/frontend/node/**


Commit all the changes to git. Exclude the folder/files you don't want commit, in my case node_modules
Execute the following command to clear the cache

git rm -r --cached .


Execute git status command and it should output node_modules and sub directories marked for deletion
Now execute

git add .
git commit -m "fixed untracked files" 


That's it. Comment if you any questions.


Update: Windows users make sure your .gitignore uses UTF-8 rather than UTF-16. See comment for details