Git Ignores and Maven targets

Question

Anyone know if it is possible to ignore all the instances of a particular directory in a file structure managed by Git?

I'm looking to exclude all the target folders in a Maven project with a number of submodules. I know I can explicitly exclude each of them in a top level .gitignore, but I'd really like to be able to specify a pattern like **/target/* there to have it automatically ignore the instance in sub directories?

Is this possible?

With what configuration are you making this work? /.settings/ would only ignore 'xxx/.settings/*', not '.settings/*' or 'xxx/yyy/.settings/*': the ignore patterns do not seem to be applied recursively. See also stackoverflow.com/questions/971465/… . — VonC
– VonC, Commented Jun 14, 2009 at 13:46

Andrew Marshall · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-14 02:43:09Z

245

The .gitignore file in the root directory does apply to all subdirectories. Mine looks like this:

.classpath .project .settings/ target/

This is in a multi-module maven project. All the submodules are imported as individual eclipse projects using m2eclipse. I have no further .gitignore files. Indeed, if you look in the gitignore man page:

Patterns read from a .gitignore file in the same directory as the path, or in any parent directory…

So this should work for you.

edited Mar 14, 2012 at 2:43

Andrew Marshall

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answered Jun 15, 2009 at 10:08

Dominic Mitchell

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3 Comments

VonC Over a year ago

That is a better answer than '/target/'. It does exclude a directory wherever it is located in the tree of directories. But it would not work for files (see stackoverflow.com/questions/971465/… )

user1387219 Over a year ago

if you continue reading it says "These patterns match relative to the location of the .gitignore file." Your answear is wrong...

Cristiano Costantini Over a year ago

I use this approach and use "target/" to ignore all maven build folders, however be careful that you risk to ignore code that is located in packages containing a "target" folder in their path. (In a project with the following classes: src/main/java/org/example/game/archery/bow/LongBow.java and src/main/java/org/example/game/archery/target/Target.java, your would find nothing to hit with your LongBow with such .gitignore configuration :-) )

user1411381 · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-08 03:09:52Z

118

It is possible to use patterns in a .gitignore file. See the gitignore man page. The pattern */target/* should ignore any directory named target and anything under it. Or you may try */target/** to ignore everything under target.

edited Jun 8, 2012 at 3:09

user1411381

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answered Jun 14, 2009 at 0:52

baudtack

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6 Comments

sgargan Over a year ago

Thanks! Here for anyone else, is contents for a .gitignore to skip the ususal maven & eclipse suspects. target/* /target/ .metadata tar.gz .classpath .project */.settings/

VonC Over a year ago

With what configuration are you making this work? /.settings/ would only ignore 'xxx/.settings/*', not '.settings/*' or 'xxx/yyy/.settings/*': the ignore patterns do not seem to be applied recursively. See also stackoverflow.com/questions/971465/… .

Bogdan Over a year ago

For multi-module projects you may want to use **/target/, but be careful not to exclude legitimate "target" directories in the sources

Abhijeet Over a year ago

/target/** works in \.git\info\exclude file a well.

okutane Over a year ago

Just tried to commit a java project with "target" subpackage in one of it's modules. :(

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Tomasz Mularczyk · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-10 11:19:08Z

As already pointed out in comments by Abhijeet you can just add line like:

/target/**

to exclude file in \.git\info\ folder.

Then if you want to get rid of that target folder in your remote repo you will need to first manually delete this folder from your local repository, commit and then push it. Thats because git will show you content of a target folder as modified at first.

The additional action set me straight. I added target/ but the directory continued to exist in the repo. Once removed from the repo, the target folder was never re-added.

Gleidosn · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-20 18:51:06Z

add following lines in gitignore, from all undesirable files

/target/ */target/** **/META-INF/ !.mvn/wrapper/maven-wrapper.jar ### STS ### .apt_generated .classpath .factorypath .project .settings .springBeans .sts4-cache ### IntelliJ IDEA ### .idea *.iws *.iml *.ipr ### NetBeans ### /nbproject/private/ /build/ /nbbuild/ /dist/ /nbdist/ /.nb-gradle/

Rajeev Rathor · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-18 13:55:45Z

I ignore all classes residing in target folder from git. add following line in open .gitignore file:

/.class

OR

*/target/**

It is working perfectly for me. try it.

jarey · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-08 09:09:41Z

1

For multi-module repositories, in addition to @Gleidosn answer I would add the following expression to take into consideration the nested target folders:

**/target/

answered Nov 8, 2023 at 9:09

jarey

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1 Comment

Mateva Dec 15, 2024 at 23:35

This is the only solution that worked for my project, where the target folders are more than one level into the project root.

Lova Chittumuri · Accepted Answer · 2022-01-17 13:07:22Z

For the Spring Tool Suite, Add the following ignore resources to .gitignore file and commit into the repository

*.classpath *.class *.prefs *.jar *.lst *.project *.factorypath *.original target/ .settings/ .apt_generated .sts4-cache .springBeans

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