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/
