Mercurial: Global .hgignore

By  on  

I've worked with git for several years and one of my favorite git posts is Create a Global .gitignore which details how you can create a global .gitignore file to ignore certain useless files (think .DS_Store, node_modules, etc.) so that you aren't always adding the same files to every repository's .gitignore file and don't get presented with a bunch of garbage when running git status.

The team I've been shifted to at Mozilla uses Mercurial instead of git, so you can imagine I'm trying to shake off the git mindset so I can become a Mercurial master.  With that said, a trick like a global .gitignore is philosophy-independent and just a good help.  The first step is opening your profile's .hgrc file and adding the following under the [ui] section:

[ui]
ignore = ~/.hgignore

The above points to the location of a global .hgignore file.  Now open your .hgignore file and add files and directories which you never want added to any repositories:

.DS_Store
.orig
node_modules/

Global .*ignore files take a moment to configure and keep paying back by preventing noise and unwanted files in commits.  Take the time and enjoy the rewards!

Recent Features

  • By
    Responsive and Infinitely Scalable JS Animations

    Back in late 2012 it was not easy to find open source projects using requestAnimationFrame() - this is the hook that allows Javascript code to synchronize with a web browser's native paint loop. Animations using this method can run at 60 fps and deliver fantastic...

  • By
    LightFace:  Facebook Lightbox for MooTools

    One of the web components I've always loved has been Facebook's modal dialog.  This "lightbox" isn't like others:  no dark overlay, no obnoxious animating to size, and it doesn't try to do "too much."  With Facebook's dialog in mind, I've created LightFace:  a Facebook lightbox...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Flext: MooTools Auto-Growing Textrea Plugin

    A while back David Walsh published a list of 7 MooTools Plugins You Should Use on Every Website which included 'AutoGrow' a text area expander plugin. 'AutoGrow' is very similar in results to the class I wrote for Education.com, Flext. I decided to release this...

  • By
    Web Audio API

    The Web Audio API allows developers to load and decode audio on demand using JavaScript.  The more I evaluate awesome games for Firefox OS TVs, the more I get to learn about these APIs that I normally wouldn't touch.  The following is a very basic introduction to the WebAudio API...

Discussion

  1. Mark S

    That’s a really useful trick! However, isn’t it most effective when working on projects by yourself? If I understand correctly it means that you wouldn’t be committing the details of the files to ignore so if someone else contributed to the project who hadn’t also configured their global ignores they could end up committing a load of junk files…

    • Mark S

      Of course you mentioned that in the linked article on doing the same in git which I only read _after_ posting my first comment ;)

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!