Ignoring editor config files in Git

Many editors create config files when working in a project directory. For example, the .idea/ directory that IntelliJ creates.

You can ignore these in Git using one of two options:

• Globally, in all Git repositories via ~/.gitignore
• Per-repository, via .git/info/exclude (which is just like .gitignore but not committed to the repository)

Why not commit .gitignore editor config files?

There are many editors that produce repository config files, so if we commit them to .gitignore questions arise:

• Do we do this for every editor people at Sourcegraph use?
• How do we keep this .gitignore in sync with all the other repositories?
• When creating a new repository, what should go in .gitignore?

Instead of maintaining all that, we keep things simple and do not commit editor configs, nor their exclusions, to .gitignore in the repository and configure it as part of our development environments instead.