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.

       Files that are already tracked are not affected by .hgignore,  even  if  they  appear  in  .hgignore.  An
       untracked  file  X  can  be  explicitly  added with hg add X, even if X would be excluded by a pattern in
       .hgignore.

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.

       rootglob

              A variant of glob that is rooted (see below).

       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 ^. To get the same effect with glob-syntax, you have to use rootglob.

       Subdirectories can have their own .hgignore settings by adding subinclude:path/to/subdir/.hgignore to the
       root .hgignore. See hg help patterns for details on subinclude: and include:.

       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/

DEBUGGING

       Use  the  debugignore command to see if and why a file is ignored, or to see the combined ignore pattern.
       See hg help debugignore for details.

AUTHOR

       Vadim Gelfer <vadim.gelfer@gmail.com>

       Mercurial was written by Olivia Mackall <olivia@selenic.com>.

SEE ALSO

       hg(1), hgrc(5)

COPYING

       This manual page is copyright 2006 Vadim Gelfer.  Mercurial is copyright 2005-2023 Olivia 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)