view mercurial/help/hgignore.txt @ 23883:7e71898a7cdc

share: replace the bookmarks.shared file with an entry on a new "shared" file

cd79fb4d75fd introduced a way to share bookmarks. When a repository share that
shares bookmarks was created, a .hg/bookmarks.shared file was created to mark
the repository share as one that shares its bookmarks.

We have plans to introduce other levels of sharing, including a "full share"
mode. Rather than creating a new ".shared" file for each new thing that we may
want to share It seems better to create a single "shared" file that will list
what is shared for a given shared repository. This should make it much easier
to get a list of everything that is shared by a given shared repository.

The shared file contains a list of shared "items" (such as bookmarks). Each
shared "item" is added as a new line in the file. For now the only possible
entry in the file is "bookmarks".

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.

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/