Every directory on macOS gets a .DS_Store file to tell Finder how it should display it. 99% of the time we don’t want to include .DS_Store files in our repositories so we add .DS_Store to our projects .gitignore file.
What if we could globally ignore .DS_Store rather than adding it to every repository’s .gitignore file?
core.excludesfile
Git allows us to specify a global gitignore file via the variable core.excludesfile.
Global .gitignore
Create (and populate) your global gitignore file.
In my dotfiles repo I’ve called mine .gitignore_global then symlinked it into my home directory as .gitignore.
ln -s /Users/0xmachos/Documents/Projects/dotfiles/.gitignore_global /Users/0xmachos/.gitignore
Tell Git About It
Tell Git about it via one of the following methods:
Execute the following:
git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore
Or add the following to your .gitconfig:
excludesfile = ~/.gitignore
You no longer have to add .DS_Store to every project’s .gitignore file.
