HGIGNORE(5) Mercurial Manual HGIGNORE(5)
NAME
hgignore - 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 manually. 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 ignore configuration key on the
[ui] section of hg help config for details of how to configure these files.
To control Mercurial's handling of files that it manages, many commands support the -I and -X options; see hg help <command> and hg help
patterns for details.
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 follow, 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 pattern, start it with ^.
Note Patterns specified in other than .hgignore are always rooted. Please see hg help patterns for details.
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 ALSO
hg(1), hgrc(5)
COPYING
This manual page is copyright 2006 Vadim Gelfer. Mercurial is copyright 2005-2012 Matt Mackall. Free use of this software is granted
under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or any later version.
AUTHOR
Vadim Gelfer <vadim.gelfer@gmail.com>
Organization: Mercurial
HGIGNORE(5)