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Gitignore

As you've seen, it's pretty normal to use the following workflow from the top level of your repo:

git add .
git commit -m "some message here"
git push origin main

A problem arises when we want to put files in our project's directory, but we don't want to track them with Git. A .gitignore file solves this. For example, if you work with Python, you probably want to ignore automatically generated files like .pyc and __pycache__. If you are building a server, you probably want to ignore .env files that might hold private keys. If you (I'm sorry) work with JavaScript, you might want to ignore the node_modules directory.

Here's example contents of a .gitignore file, which exists at the root of a repo:

node_modules
.env

This will ignore every path matching node_modules as a path segment (directory name or file name). It ignores:

node_modules/code.js
src/node_modules/code.js
src/node_modules

It does not ignore:

src/node_modules_2/code.js
env/node_modules_3
src/node_modules.js

This will also ignore the .env file preventing you from committing sensitive environment variables (like API keys, DB credentials, etc.) ...cause that would be bad.

Assignment

Create secure/passwords.txt (create the secure directory first if it doesn't already exist). Paste the following into the file and save it:

root: 12345
admin: 54321
lane: 00000
prime: APICJJY$$PO!NJ@L

Create a file called guilty_pleasures.md in the repo's root directory and paste the following into it:

# Guilty Pleasures (tell no one)

- The Notebook
- The Love Guru
- Birdemic: Shock and Terror
- Troll 2
- Manos: The Hands of Fate
- Sharknado

Create a .gitignore file at the root of the repo and ensure both of those files are ignored. Ignore the entire secure directory, not just passwords.txt.

touch .gitignore

A .gitignore is just a plain text file named ".gitignore". Edit it like any .txt or .md file.

Commit your changes with a message starting with M:. Make sure the .gitignore file is included in the commit, but do not commit secure/passwords.txt, the secure directory, or guilty_pleasures.md (they should stay untracked because they're ignored).

Run and submit the CLI tests from the root of your project directory.