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What I did:

I think there were some weird configurations from the github gui that caused this issue and prevented me from being able to easily use git from command line or even git-bash.

I ended up just uninstalling github and git then reinstalling just git for windows. I now have everything running off the command line(except ssh which I run from git-bash). Much easier and more reliable that the github gui.

Thanks to mu 無 for taking the time to try to figure this out. I didn't end up using his answer, but if I hadn't needed to do a reinstall of git it would have been what I needed to do.

I am using the github gui on my local machine. I just noticed that a commit I was about to make was going to update all of my recently update node modules. I set up my .gitignore to ignore the entire node_modules/ directory.

I'm not sure what to do about this. All the file types I included in .gitignore were ignored. It's just the directories that it seems to ignore.

Here is my .gitignore file:

################# ## Sublime Text ################# *.sublime-project *.sublime-workspace ################# ## Images ################# *.jpg *.jpeg *.png *.gif *.psd *.ai ################# ## Windows detritus ################# # Windows image file caches Thumbs.db ehthumbs.db # Folder config file Desktop.ini # Recycle Bin used on file shares $RECYCLE.BIN/ # Mac crap .DS_Store ################# ## Directories ################# dev/ cms/core/config/ node_modules/
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10
  • what is the output of git status? Add that to the question... Commented Apr 7, 2014 at 22:57
  • 1
    I don't know anything about that Commented Apr 7, 2014 at 22:58
  • Go to your terminal, and run git status in the repository. Whatever is the output, put them here. Commented Apr 7, 2014 at 22:59
  • I am on a windows machine. So terminal git commands don't work. 'git' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Commented Apr 7, 2014 at 23:01
  • 1
    Look this: making git forget about a file that was tracked but is now in gitignore | StackOverflow Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 13:55

10 Answers 10

Reset to default
331

Since the node_modules directory is already tracked as part of the repository, the .gitignore rule will not apply to it.

You need to untrack the directory from git using

git rm -r --cached node_modules git commit -m "removing node_modules"

You can run the above 2 in git-bash.

After this, the .gitignore rule will ignore the directory away.

Note that this will remove the directory node_modules from your other repos once you pull the changes in. Only the original repo where you made that commit will still have the node_modules folder there.

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16 Comments

That is not a typo. The directory created by node is node_modules/
the ignore rule is node_modules, and in your question, at the beginning it is node_module.
How do I untrack without command line? Or how do I access git in command line on a windows machine and no bash?
go to git-bash. Git for windows comes with its own git-bash. How do you otherwise commit from windows?
I commit with the github gui. That's all I've ever used in windows. On linux I can just access git from the command line.
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34

Similar to Zach, I also used echo "node_modules/" >> .gitignore.

The problem was it had created the file with encoding UCS-2 LE BOM. Using notepad++ I changed the encoding to UTF-8 and voila - node_modules is now ignored.

enter image description here

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2 Comments

This answer should have much more up votes as the problem and solution are really surprising. Thank you!
I did exactly this, fml. Just deleted and re-created using VS Studio. Thanks @Scotty.NET
21

If the files are already tracked the .gitignore file will not override this. You will need to use git rm --cached <files>

See the full details on git rm at https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-rm.html I ran into this once or twice myself early on with git and it was not quite what I expected either.

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1 Comment

This is more comprehensive answer to the title in question if we ignore the typo problems in the OP's question. Useful for people arriving w/ search.
4

If you work with node projects, I like this .gitignore:

# See http://help.github.com/ignore-files/ for more about ignoring files. # dependencies node_modules # testing coverage # production build # misc .DS_Store .env npm-debug.log
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3

I had this problem. Somehow when I generated the file (using echo "node_modules" > .gitignore) it had inserted a garbage character at the beginning of the file (I blame powershell).

So, if you run into this problem try deleting your .gitignore and starting over.

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1 Comment

Seems to be a powershell issue, since same thing happened here.
0

None of the solutions above worked for me and I don't know why

Eventually what I did was:

  1. Duplicated to project folder in order to don't work with the main one
  2. Then I removed .git & .gitignore file (CMD+SHIFT+DOT shows hidden files)
  3. Added .gitignore file with touch .gitignore at root and added node_modules
  4. Initialized git again with git init
  5. Added remote again with git remote add origin your_repo
  6. git add .
  7. git commit -m 'added ignore file'
  8. git push -u origin master

And continue working with this new directory. Please note that it was a solution for me because it was my first commit.

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0

Well what works for me was add "node_modules" to .gitignore

backend\node_modules frontend\your_proyect\node_modules node_modules
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0

Just remove the initial git configuration from your folder by rm -rf .git. Use the created .gitignore file and add all the file you want to add. Then reinitialize the git configuration in your folder with git init. This will solve your problem.

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-1

try this command, it will resolve your issue:

git config core.ignorecase true
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-1

I haven't seen this posted anywhere, as perhaps it should be obvious, until I forgot, but adding a comment to the end of a gitignore line is NOT actually a comment! Comments on their own line!

# .gitignore (this is a comment) my_bad_dir/ # This is not a comment, and my_bad_dir/ won't be ignored 
~$ man gitignore | grep comment • A line starting with # serves as a comment.
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